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Perhaps one of the more unappreciated parts of the Google IO press conference was Google’s education initiative. El Goog is building a Play Store specially for teachers and students, giving those in the education field an avenue to find apps, games and content that will help in the ever-important process of educating the world’s youth. There were some interesting things presented here.
For starters, the Play Store will be just like the Play Store we know and love, except content will be split up by age/grade level and subject. You can find all the best apps for math or science, for instance, depending on what your curriculum requires. All of the apps were specially suggested by other teachers, so educators know they’re choosing from a quality list of tools that will help aide them in teaching children.
Another great feature includes the ability for teachers to remotely send apps and games to students’ devices. This is a key feature that would be ideal for those moments when you assign a student homework that requires an app or if you just want them to have a helpful resource they can refer to. And if it’s a paid app or resource, teachers can purchase them using a school-controlled account of funds.
Education is always a big topic of discussion when it comes to budding technology. How early do we get kids interested in technology? And how can we use said technology to improve their learning experiences? Knowing first hand how important having access to contemporary technology was throughout my early years I fully support this initiative and can’t wait to see how big devices can be come in classroom settings.
The service won’t be launching until August, but Google will start accepting applications from schools and educators this June. They’re already inviting developers to create great education apps. Be sure to bring this up at your next PTA meeting and let your administration know that technology belongs in your children’s hands right now!
This would be perfect for the school district I live in except they ignored the very vocal majority who wanted them to get Chromebooks and Nexus 7’s for all students but the administrator has an iPhone so they instead bought overpriced Macbooks and iPads for all students and now the school district is severely low on cash reserves and laying off staff.
I see there is only 1 comment so far about this. This just goes to show how much education is so undervalued and unappreciated. This should be the exact opposite, people should be worrying about our children’s education and not about profit, or the next game coming out, etc. US education is so low, its surprising, yet, seeing the way people respond to education it doesn’t seem so surprising afterall
Wait… are you implying that most people are selfish and short-sighted which is why education is so uninteresting….. unless you’re a parent? :)
Wow! More Geography Apps! :)))
I know some high schools that may be getting iPads instead of laptops. This makes me want to make them get Android devices. This is wonderful for schools. Really useful for teachers and I love this idea. It shows how much Google cares
Google needs to really advertise this, it’s not something that should just trickle out to the community and get overlooked easily. Sounds like an awesome service, especially the part about educators actively being a part of selecting apps.
Now please do the same for the medical community, the hospital I work in could really benefit from a service like this.
Wish Google would have gotten on this earlier. My school district went to ipads for EVERY student and teacher. Android simply couldn’t compete with what Apple can currently offer. I hope this works out for Android, but they have a huge hurdle to get over and are way behind the game right now.
Fedena for Education
http://bit.ly/12Tx5Md