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Posted by Milton Burgese, Head of Education, Google Brazil

Brazil is one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, and the state of São Paulo is the economic powerhouse underneath it all. The future of this continued growth rests in the hands of its youth. The state of São Paulo has more than four million students, 5,000 schools and a community of almost 300,000 teachers and staff.

To equip future generations with the skills to succeed in tomorrow’s workforce, we are partnering with the Department of Education of the State of São Paulo to provide and deploy Google Apps for Education across the state, for free.

“We are so excited to be bringing Google Apps for Education to more than four million students of São Paulo,” said Geraldo Alckmin, Governor of São Paulo. “Finally, classes will go beyond the four walls of the school.” We are working to deploy Google Apps for Education to all 4 million students within the year.

Milton Burgese, Head of Education, Google Brazil, speaks about the partnership

The municipality of São Caetano do Sul, a thought leader across the country and known for both quality of education and life, announced this week that they are excited to be going Google at an event hosted in São Caetano. We will be deploying Google Apps for Education in 67 schools there, reaching 19,000 students and 1,500 teachers.

“I'm sure that the learning process of our children and youths will be improved by the support of new technological tools that are being brought to our schools by Google” said Paulo Nunes Pinheiro, Mayor of São Caetano do Sul.

We’ve also partnered with the Escola de Formação de Profesores (EFAP), a professional development facility, to train all of São Paulo's 300,000 teachers on the use of Google Apps for Education. Helping them master the new technology will help them communicate, collaborate and partner even better with their schools and students. As Herman Jacobus Cornelius Voorwald, the São Paulo State Secretary of Education, told us, “If we want to change our country, we must use education… We need to dedicate time to helping teachers learn by showing them different ways to embrace technology.”

We believe in the power of the web to help people discover, connect, and learn. And we’re thrilled to see Sao Paolo and São Caetano do Sul join Malaysia, the City of Boston and a growing number of other forward-thinking districts around the world who are embracing the web and technology to drive a new, better future for our students.

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Dan Maas, Chief Information Officer for Littleton Public Schools, a school district just south of Denver, Colorado, with 15,000 K-12 students across 13 elementary schools, 4 middle schools, 3 high schools, several alternative programs, a preschool, and 2 charter schools. Check out their case study to learn more.

What motivated Littleton Public Schools to move to Google Apps?
Students today are growing up in a different educational world. Online tools have fundamentally changed how today’s kids learn, interact and work with each other. Moving to Google Apps was a natural step in creating a modern learning environment for our students, because the tools are intuitive and familiar to them. Before using Google Apps, the district was hosting email servers for teachers and staff, but had no collaboration tools and homework was done largely by emailing attachments or making paper submissions, a cumbersome process. Our top priority was to address these challenges.

LPS buildings average 50 years in age, but with Google, the learning is in the cloud.

How is the district using Google Apps now, nearly two years after deployment?
Today, every Littleton staff member, teacher and student in 4th grade and above has a Google Apps account — some schools have even started introducing their kindergartners to the Google tools. Adoption has been incredible across the board: during the 2011-2012 school year, Littleton students created more than 200,000 new Google Docs, and by the spring of 2013 they were averaging over 20,000 each month.

Are there any teachers or departments in particular that have embraced Google Apps in innovative ways?
I'm inspired by literally hundreds of classrooms in our district and how they're using technology to help their students learn. Katie Christie’s 5th grade class at Runyon Elementary School, for example, is using Apps in a particularly impressive way as part of the "Inspired Writing" initiative. The curriculum revolves around a Google Site that houses learning objectives, resources and videos, assignments, student and teacher work. Mrs. Christie posts assignments daily on a Google Calendar, which is embedded into the class’s Google Site and can even be added to a student or parent’s personal Google account. Google Docs lets students do different kinds of creative homework, including using Google Drawings to creating flowcharts for a book report and relying on Presentations to collectively create and speak to a deck about astronomy. It’s validating for us to know that Google holds her work in equally high regard — Mrs. Christie was recognized as a Google Certified teacher last spring.

Even second graders are using Apps for writing projects like pen pals among multiple schools, where kids don't write together several times a year, but several times every day.

Are you seeing any cost savings from using Google Apps?
We’re saving more than $42,000 each year with Apps, since we no longer have to maintain email servers, storage or licensing software. That’s not even including all the time we’re saving our IT team, since they no longer have to waste hours clearing out full email inboxes and resolving downtime issues.

What are you personally most proud of when you look back at how Littleton has changed since moving to Google Apps?
I love seeing how the technology empowers our students. Google Apps are great equalizers – regardless of their home situation, every student has the opportunity to learn with Apps. These tools, paired with the skills students gain in school, are universal and will serve them for the rest of their lives. It’s so inspiring to me and all our teachers to see the students light up and become masters of their own direction.

LPS students create 20,000 Google Docs every month as a normal part of their learning.

One cannot underestimate the power of collaboration. Any given feature set of a software or cloud application will evolve over time, so the specific skills are not as important. But the habits of mind that one develops by working with collaborative documents are truly different than what a 20th century education encouraged. Collaboration means inclusion; inclusion means more brain power applied to a problem; more brain power means better solutions; and better solutions produced by an inclusive process means better overall understanding. What more could any educator hope for?

Posted by Bram Bout, Director of Education

Earlier this week we announced the release of the Google for Education Learning Center, an online portal that helps educators learn about Google tools for teaching and learning. The Center is a one-stop-shop for hundreds of best practice how-to videos, cases studies and guides. It also includes links to online communities and our newly revised exams. By passing 5 exams teachers can become qualified as Google Educators.

We wanted the bulk of the content in the Center to be made for teachers, by teachers. So we worked with some of our Google Certified Teachers to create it. Today we’ll hear from three of those educators to get more information about their tips and tricks for teaching and training.
Bram: What are your top tips for running successful professional development with educators?

Jennie: My tip for training is to leverage the same best practices you’d use with students. Focus on differentiating for your (teacher) learner, engage them in active learning and allow them to collaborate with one another to make the experience social.

Jay: I have two pieces of advice: start small and give it a go. Pick just one part of your course to enhance with technology or just one tool to use more effectively. Learn something new and give it a go. Get support from your peers, school or PLN. Failing is okay, that’s how we learn.

Kevin: Whether you are teaching or training, clear communication is essential. The best slides have the least amount of text. Make images on the slides focused, keeping words to a minimum, to emphasize the point made in the actual presentation. No one wants to “read” a presentation.

Jennie: It is important to practice what you preach. If you're training people on Google Apps, use Google Apps. If you’re leading a session, create a Google Site to share information. Share a collaborative Google Doc so participants can take notes together and exchange ideas.

Bram: What are your most effective training activities?

Jennie: I have a professional development opener I like to call the "Gripe Jam." While I play the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” teachers write down their gripes and I compile these into a Google Doc. The teachers then vote on the most important ones. This is how we decide where we begin our exploration of digital learning. Crowd-sourced PD is a huge buy-in generator. Many teachers respond better to new ideas when we first listen to their current issues.

Jay: I advise people to keep a YouTube playlist for “Stuff I’ve Learned.” I learn a lot from YouTube videos. As I’m looking up videos and learning new things I add the videos to a playlist with other things that YouTube has taught me. This not only serves as a great repository I can come back to for review, it also helps me to model how and what I am learning. This could be embedded on your professional portfolio site to help demonstrate how you are a contemporary learner.

Bram: What is a top piece of advice about Google tools for teaching?

Kevin: The number one recommendation I have for teachers who assign projects using Docs and Drive is to turn the hand-in process upside-down. Rather than having students turn-in their work at the end of the assignment cycle, have them turn it in at the beginning. The first step in any class project is to have students create their document, presentation, or spreadsheet, and have them share it with you as the teacher immediately. This allows teachers to monitor and support students through the entire process.

Bram: Have any recent professional development experiences really stayed with you?

Jay: Recently I was working with a teacher named Rick, a master teacher with decades of experience who wanted to use technology to improve student writing. We started small with the prewriting process and brainstorming with Google Drawings and Docs. I pushed him a little more. He was amazed when we looked at the Comments feature, which allowed him to provide better feedback to his students and they blossomed. He was so energized and excited about teaching writing again. Even with his vast experience and being so close to retirement, Rick demonstrated my two recommendations: start small and give it a go. He was able to rekindle his own passion and effectively integrate technology. We can all do this.

Posted by Michael de la Cruz, International Head of Education

January is a time for fresh starts and resolutions, and for the last 30 years it has also been the time for BETT, the world’s largest education technology conference. This year’s event will be attended by 35,000 headteachers, educators and learning professionals from across the world. BETT brings everyone together at ExCeL London to discuss and debate the future of education and how technology can help raise standards and tear down barriers in the classroom.

Google has been participating at BETT for the last four years and we are back again, representing the growing and healthy adoption of Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks in classrooms all over the world. More than 30 million students, teachers and staff use Google Apps for Education and 5,000 schools use Chromebooks globally. Whole universities such as Keio University in Japan, cities such as Chicago, States such as São Paulo in Brazil, and even countries such as Malaysia have gone Google in the classroom and lecture hall.

Closer to the home of BETT, we recently deployed 810 Chromebooks in the Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy (IPACA), a non-selective, co-educational state school for students aged 3-16, located across four campuses in Dorset.

“By using Chromebooks and Google Apps, we’ve been able to transform the learning experience for all of our students,” says Alison Appleyard, the school’s Principal. “This open access to online resources is key to students becoming successful independent learners, empowering them to use resources as they see best and giving them the skills they’ll need to be successful in the future.”

IPACA students collaborate on a project together using Chromebooks

IPACA students learning on the web using a Chromebook

For anyone keen to hear how Google is working with schools, we invite you to visit our BETT Google zone at E240. The zone will showcase the full range of Chrome devices, including the recently announced Dell Chromebook 11, Toshiba Chromebook and the LG Chromebase, all for visitors to experience firsthand. Every 30 minutes there will be lightning talks at our on-site teaching theatre (schedule here) where educators from the field will share their experiences of using Google tools for teaching and learning.

For those not at BETT, school leaders can learn more about Chromebooks for Education by visiting our website.