Growing the next generation of computer scientists and business leaders

<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Cross-posted on the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/2009/10/growing-next-generation-of-computer.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Google Student Blog</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">)</span><br /></span></span><br />We had a busy summer here at Google interacting with students through a wide variety of scholarship, internship and networking opportunities across North America. Here's a look back at a few of our programs (you can bet we'll be hosting them again!) along with news on some upcoming initiatives.<br /><br />Rising college sophomores participated in two Google programs: Google <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/fuse/">FUSE</a>, in its inaugural year, and the Google <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/cssi/index.html">Computer Science Summer Institute</a> (CSSI).<br /><br />For FUSE, we welcomed 50 rising college sophomores to our <a href="http://maps.google.com/?q=Google%20New%20York@40.741962,-74.004624&hl=en">New York City office</a> for a three-day retreat designed to connect students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computer science. The retreat focused on making connections between students and Googlers, encouraging students to create meaningful academic experiences and allowing them to learn more about possible career paths via hands-on activities, panel discussions and a bit of fun around the New York City area.<br /><br />Another group of twenty rising sophomores spent two weeks at the Googleplex in Mountain View for the second annual Computer Science Summer Institute. This special program included an interactive and collaborative Computer Science curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. Students worked in teams to create an interactive web application using Python in Google App Engine. When not in class, they heard technical talks from Google engineers, spoke with professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a Computer Science degree. They also had some fun joining the Bay Area summer interns on a boat cruise and catching a baseball game after an exciting San Francisco scavenger hunt.<br /><br />In addition, our engineering internship program hosted more than 450 college (undergraduate and graduate) interns in 15 locations across North America. These interns were an integral part of the engineering team and made significant contributions this summer working on exciting projects including Android, Chrome, <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/back-to-school-with-google-docs.html">Docs</a> and machine translation.<br /><br />We also had more than 100 students working across multiple functions, including sales and engineering in Mountain View, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston as part of the Building Opportunities for Leadership and Development (<a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=bold.html&src=bold">BOLD</a>) Program. BOLD is a 10-week internship program designed to provide exposure to the technology industry for students from groups that are historically underrepresented in technology. This summer experience includes a unique glimpse into a <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=bold.html&src=bold">business</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=boldpracticum.html">engineering</a> career, professional development and leadership courses, as well as one-on-one mentorship designed to further support professional growth.<br /><br />Of course, we realize that growing future leaders in engineering and business doesn't just start with college students. For this reason, we partner with the <a href="http://global.leadprogram.org/">LEAD</a> programs in both <a href="http://business.leadprogram.org/">business</a> and <a href="http://www.leadprogram.org/page/leadengineering.html">engineering</a> to encourage outstanding high school students to pursue careers in these fields. This year, all four LEAD Summer Engineering Institute participants had the opportunity to tour a local Google office to attend technical talks and interact with Google engineers (okay, with some tasty food and video games thrown in as well).<br /><br />As part of Google's ongoing commitment to recognizing student achievements and promoting leadership, we also offer a number of academic scholarships. We are currently accepting applications for the <a href="http://limeconnect.com/google.html">Google Lime Scholarship for Student with Disabilities</a> in the U.S. and Canada, and the Anita Borg Scholarship in <a href="http://www.google.ca/intl/en/anitaborg/">Canada</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/anitaborg-emea/">Europe, the Middle East and Africa</a>, and the <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/anitaborg/">United States</a>. In case you're curious, we offer a <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/students">host of scholarships</a> for many other international regions.<br /><br />If one or more of these opportunities sounds like something you'd like to participate in, you can find applications for full time opportunities and summer internship opportunities on our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=students.html">student job site</a>. Visit our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=students.html&sid=scholarships&src=scholarships">scholarship page</a> for more information on our scholarship opportunities. And follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/googlestudents">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/GoogleStudents?ref=ts">Facebook</a> for updates on application deadlines and new program announcements.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJujoe9X4lh0L3b2svRecsCKoAeEOaAhZWTh2ZekIiw9hpNsaJo3TEpMrTANglofb7kdl-f5I5wbc_iC91vz2uu__mc3xwSQ_sryNu5brF2MEMuhgpRAV8w3pkKGl5J_pKnkjI28cc9QC/s1600-h/bingo.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397728403069673602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJujoe9X4lh0L3b2svRecsCKoAeEOaAhZWTh2ZekIiw9hpNsaJo3TEpMrTANglofb7kdl-f5I5wbc_iC91vz2uu__mc3xwSQ_sryNu5brF2MEMuhgpRAV8w3pkKGl5J_pKnkjI28cc9QC/s400/bingo.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Making an early connection playing </span></span><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=people+bingo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">People Bingo</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> at Google FUSE</span></span>.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-BLYMpKghtkpu8dQTWNIRskcvZbMnckg5pLfsM5RYvBxMJvC94swRBAPYOh-zoN1ylSR1Pe0O60dJB3Jg1aIIVgMZm__PcU6K3HPLAvOl6kb3N6BTwTqJUxBOtw-9mI51S5b7XqAJIE/s1600-h/break.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397728408312217554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj-BLYMpKghtkpu8dQTWNIRskcvZbMnckg5pLfsM5RYvBxMJvC94swRBAPYOh-zoN1ylSR1Pe0O60dJB3Jg1aIIVgMZm__PcU6K3HPLAvOl6kb3N6BTwTqJUxBOtw-9mI51S5b7XqAJIE/s400/break.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;">Taking a break from bowling during Google FUSE.</span><br /></div></span><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Kyle Ewing, Talent and Outreach Programs - University Programs and Recruiting</span>

Growing the next generation of computer scientists and business leaders

(Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog ) We had a busy summer here at Google interacting with students through a wide variety of scholarsh...

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Sesame Street comes to Google: Improving our education system at the Breakthrough Learning forum

If you could reinvent the American education system, what would you do? It's a question we think about a lot here at Google. This week we're exploring possibilities with <a href="http://www.google.com/events/digitalage/">Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age</a>, a forum organized in cooperation with <a href="http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/">The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop</a> and <a href="http://www.commonsensemedia.org/">Common Sense Media</a>, with the support of the <a href="http://macfound.org/">MacArthur Foundation</a>. This event will bring together 200 of the nation’s thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy and policy to design a strategy for scaling up effective models of teaching and learning for children, with an emphasis on technology. The forum will showcase new research, proven and promising education innovation models to challenge decision-makers to refresh and reboot American global leadership in education.<br /><br />There's plenty of evidence that shows that the current educational system in the U.S. needs improvement. Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education produced "<a href="http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html">A Nation at Risk</a>," a report which first highlighted that our country's system wasn't meeting the national need for a competitive workforce in the day's global economy. Since then, our education system has gone through great upheaval, from the state-level standards reforms in the 1990s to 2002's <a href="http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml?src=ln">No Child Left Behind</a>, which is similarly based on the belief that setting high standards measurable goals will improve individual outcomes in education. Though the intention of these reforms was to close the global achievement gap, they left many teachers and students feeling restricted to teaching and learning "to the test." And we're still seeing disheartening results; the U.S. is currently ranked 25th of <a href="http://www.oecd.org/home/">OECD</a> countries in math scores and 24th in science scores according to the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_32252351_32236191_39718850_1_1_1_1,00.html">PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World report</a>. And according to <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/Economic_impact.aspx">McKinsey's Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools</a> report, if the U.S. had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of higher-performing nations, our GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. That's 9 to 16 percent of GDP!<br /><br />Fortunately, there are people today who are working to change these statistics. One is tonight's keynote speaker, Geoff Canada, founder of the <a href="http://harlemchildrenszone.org/">Harlem Children's Zone</a>. The Harlem Children's Zone combines educational, social and medical services with the goal of reaching all of the children in Harlem. Another organization addressing the issue is the <a href="http://macfound.org/">MacArthur Foundation</a>, which has created the Digital Media and Learning Project to explore the effects of digital media on young people and its implications for the future of learning and education. And we can't forget <a href="http://www.sesameworkshop.org/home">Sesame Workshop</a>, which this year celebrates 40 years of educating children with Muppets and media.<br /><br />There's great hope for American education, as long as we can work toward innovative solutions that not only allow students distinct educational experiences tailored to their interests and abilities, but also drive toward a common goal of assessable success. Students today are technologists too, and embracing that familiarity and bringing it into the classroom will help teachers and students better engage and work together to teach and learn. Most importantly, we need to support our teachers, principals and administrators — the true agents of change who tirelessly and passionately work to connect with each and every student that passes through their classrooms. The Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age forum is one step we're taking to address some of our most pressing national education system issues.<br /><br />If you're interested in joining us at the forum, we'll be broadcasting live on the web both <a href="http://investor.shareholder.com/googpr/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=72855">today</a> and <a href="http://investor.shareholder.com/googpr/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=72857">tomorrow</a>. We welcome your <a href="http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=c77db">questions and ideas</a> to help us shape our discussions. Go to <a href="http://www.google.com/events/digitalage/">http://www.google.com/events/digitalage/</a> to participate and learn more.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing, Google Apps Education</span>

Sesame Street comes to Google: Improving our education system at the Breakthrough Learning forum

If you could reinvent the American education system, what would you do? It's a question we think about a lot here at Google. This week w...

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Five years of introducing students to open source

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s1600-h/GSOCLogo2009.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350768142386402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s320/GSOCLogo2009.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" /></a>We've just concluded our fifth <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of Code</a>, our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/supporting-students-in-open-source.html">flagship global program</a> to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been impressive. Nearly 2,000 mentors from 64 countries participated in the program. They worked to bring 1,000 students from 69 countries into the communities of <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009">150 free and open source projects</a>. We're particularly excited this year to have introduced several students to open source development that has a direct impact on social causes, from <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/mifos">microfinance software</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs">global educational initiatives</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sunlight">making government data more transparent and accessible</a>. Three months and hundreds of thousands of lines of code later, 85 percent of our student participants have successfully completed their projects. We'll be publishing more extensive program statistics and wrap up reports in the coming weeks on the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/">Google Open Source Blog</a>, so stay tuned there for more news about Google Summer of Code.<br /><br />We'd like to congratulate all of our student participants for their hard work and tremendous achievements this summer. We're excited to hear that many of our students have planned out the next few months of their coding work with their chosen open source project. Finally, our sincerest thanks to all of our mentors for volunteering their time and expertise to help these students more actively engage with open source development.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s1600-h/soc.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350985593503762" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s400/soc.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team</span>

Five years of introducing students to open source

We've just concluded our fifth Google Summer of Code , our flagship global program to introduce college and university students to open...

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The Fighting Irish: a Google Apps Education success story

We love hearing from schools using <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ogblog&utm_source=en-ogblog-na-us_q309">Google Apps Education Edition</a>, especially when it's helped them save money, gain back time or make students happy. <a href="http://www.nd.edu/">University of Notre Dame</a> is a <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/pdf/notre_dame_case_study.pdf">perfect example</a> (PDF) of one school that's seen great results by "<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/going-google-with-google-apps.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ogblog&utm_source=en-ogblog-na-us_q309">going Google</a>" to help make on-campus communication and collaboration easier.<br /><br />When this Indiana university migrated its 15,000 students and 150,000 alumni to Google Apps Education Edition about a year ago, they were hoping to improve their outdated email system. What they actually got was better than they expected: Not only were they able to improve student satisfaction by 36% according to a poll conducted on campus, but making the switch to Apps also enabled them to save over $1.5 million that they have since been able to reallocate to new IT services for students and faculty.<br /><br />Sure, it's all good to hear this from us, but you'd probably like to hear it from them, right? Well now you can. We're hosting a <a href="https://googleonline.webex.com/mw0305l/mywebex/default.do?nomenu=true&siteurl=googleonline&service=6&main_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgoogleonline.webex.com%2Fec0600l%2Feventcenter%2Fevent%2FeventAction.do%3FtheAction%3Ddetail%26confViewID%3D531776332%26siteurl%3Dgoogleonline%26%26%26#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ogblog&utm_source=en-ogblog-na-us_q309">free webinar</a> with Notre Dame on Thursday, August 13th at 10 a.m. PDT where you can learn about their experience deploying Google Apps and find out if this solution might be right for you. Whether you go to school, went to school or run a school, we encourage you to consider <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ogblog&utm_source=en-ogblog-na-us_q309">life in the cloud</a>. Who knows what results you might see?<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education Team</span>

The Fighting Irish: a Google Apps Education success story

We love hearing from schools using Google Apps Education Edition , especially when it's helped them save money, gain back time or make s...

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Two views from the 2009 Google Faculty Summit

<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(Cross-posted from the </span></span><a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-views-from-2009-google-faculty.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Google Research Blog</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">)</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>We held our fifth <a href="http://www.google.com/events/facultysummit2009/">Computer Science Faculty Summit</a> at our Mountain View campus last week. About 100 faculty attendees from schools in the Western hemisphere attended the summit, which focused on a collection of technologies that serve to connect and empower people. Included in the agenda were presentations on technologies for automated translation of human language, voice recognition, responding to crises, power monitoring and collaborative data management. We also talked about technologies to make personal systems more secure, and how to teach programming — even using Android phones. You can see a more complete list of the topics in the <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/2009facultysummit/agenda">Faculty Summit Agenda</a> or check out my <a href="http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dfr86rt_10cmxp2kcv">introductory presentation</a> for more information. <br /></div><div><br />I asked a few of the faculty to provide us their perspective on the summit, thinking their views may be more valuable than our own: <a href="http://research.cens.ucla.edu/people/estrin/">Professor Deborah Estrin</a>, a Professor of Computer Science at UCLA and an expert in large-scale sensing of environmental and other information, and <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/%7Eouster/">Professor John Ousterhout</a>, an expert in distributed operating systems and scripting languages.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Professor Estrin's perspective:</span><br /><br />We all know that Google has produced a spectacular array of technologies and services that has changed the way we create, access, manage, share and curate information. A very broad range of people samples and experiences Google’s enhancements and new services on a daily basis. I, of course, am one of those minions, but last week I had the special opportunity to get a glimpse inside the hive while attending the 2009 Google Faculty Summit. I still haven't processed all of the impressions, facts, figures and URLs that I jotted down over the packed day and a half-long gathering, but here are a few of the things that impressed me most:<br /><ul><li>The way Google simultaneously launches production services while making great advances in really hard technical areas such as machine translation and voice search, and how these two threads are fully intertwined and feed off of one another.</li><li>Their embrace of open source activities, particularly in the Android operating system and programming environment for mobiles. They also seed and sponsor all sorts of creative works, from K-12 computer science learning opportunities to an the open data kit that supports data-gathering projects worldwide. </li><li>The company’s commitment to thinking big and supporting their employees in acting on their concerns and cares in the larger geopolitical sphere. From the creation of <a href="http://www.google.org/flutrends/">Flu Trends</a> to the support of a new "Crisis Response Hackathon" (an event that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to jointly sponsor to help programmers find opportunities to use their technical skills to solve societal problems), Googlers are not just encouraged to donate dollars to important causes — they are encouraged to use their technical skills to create new solutions and tools to address the world's all-too-many challenges.</li></ul>This was my second Google Faculty Summit — I previously attended in 2007. I was impressed by the 2007 Summit, but not as deeply as I was this year. Among other things, this year I felt that Googlers talked to us like colleagues instead of just visitors. The conversations flowed: Not once did I run up across the "Sorry, can't talk about that... you know our policy on early announcements". I left quite excited about Google's expanded role in the CS research ecosystem. Thanks for changing that API!<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Professor Ousterhout's perspective:</span><br /><br />I spent Thursday and Friday this week at Google for their annual Faculty Summit. After listening to descriptions of several Google projects and talking with Googlers and the other faculty attendees, I left with two overall takeaways. First, it's becoming clear that information at scale is changing science and engineering. If you have access to enormous datasets, it opens up whole new avenues for scientific discovery and for solving problems. For example, Google's machine translation tools take advantage of "parallel texts": documents that have been translated by humans from one language to another, with both forms available. By comparing the sentences from enormous numbers of parallel texts, machine translation tools can develop effective translation tools using simple probabilistic approaches. The results are better than any previous attempts at computerized translation, but only if there are billions of words available in parallel texts. Another example of using large-scale information is Flu Trends, which tracks the spread of flu by counting the frequency of certain search terms in Google's search engine; the data is surprisingly accurate and available more quickly than that from traditional approaches.<br /><br />My second takeaway is that it's crucial to keep as much information as possible publicly available. It used to be that much of science and engineering was driven by technology: whoever had the biggest particle accelerator or the fastest computer had an advantage. From now on, information will be just as important as technology: whoever has access to the most information will make the most discoveries and create the most exciting new products. If we want to maintain the leadership position of the U.S., we must find ways to make as much information as possible freely available. There will always be vested commercial interests that want to restrict access to information, but we must fight these interests. The overall benefit to society of publishing information outweighs the benefit to individual companies from restricting it.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives</span></div>

Two views from the 2009 Google Faculty Summit

(Cross-posted from the Google Research Blog ) We held our fifth Computer Science Faculty Summit at our Mountain View campus last week. Abou...

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Announcing the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge winners

This year we held the second <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge">Google Online Marketing Challenge</a> — a global university competition, launched <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/students-surf-their-way-to-success.html">last year</a>, that gives undergraduate and post-graduate students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Working with their professors, teams receive the equivalent of US$200 to spend on Google AdWords advertising, then work with a local business to devise an effective online marketing campaign. Teams are given three weeks to mastermind the strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors.<br /><br />This year's Challenge was bigger and better in every way — more teams, more students, more universities and a significant improvement in the quality of campaigns and reports. We're thrilled to report that 2,187 teams took part from across 57 countries, representing a 36% increase in participation from last year. The Challenge continues to develop as one of the world’s biggest university competitions.<br /><br />We're excited today to announce the results. Our global winners come from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Deakin University, Australia</span> and were taught by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Chia Yao Lee </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">and</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Bardo Fraunholz</span>. The team of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Andrew Kidd, Richard Blakely, Kevin Fung, Clinton Hinze, Katalin Kish</span> and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Howard Lien</span> worked with a local kids play center, www.littletigrrs.com.au, to create a well-crafted campaign that highly impressed our judges.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKu1IHSmDQENRQKS17M1ESmj7-JD_EvIk3PM3L6fNPzzEHl_vTYXQyoOv2b1Tl-YKeQ8jaIUs4-jffwWPL2in83C4V4jV7k_I3w1AOgy0HWk1qdPn49szcplhKBOaBWPg18cZnn-tKuwtn/s1600-h/Deakin-Uni---LittleTigrrs-Montage.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361742378326156802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKu1IHSmDQENRQKS17M1ESmj7-JD_EvIk3PM3L6fNPzzEHl_vTYXQyoOv2b1Tl-YKeQ8jaIUs4-jffwWPL2in83C4V4jV7k_I3w1AOgy0HWk1qdPn49szcplhKBOaBWPg18cZnn-tKuwtn/s400/Deakin-Uni---LittleTigrrs-Montage.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 189px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Clockwise from top left: Richard Blakely, Chia Yao Lee (professor), Katalin Kish, Kevin Fung, Bardo Fraunholz (professor), Howard Lien, Andrew Kidd, Fiona and Mike (from Little Tigrrs), Clinton Hinze and Mick, The Big Hearted Tiger</span></span><br /></div><br />Team spokesman Andrew Kidd gave us some insight into their winning campaign:<br /><blockquote>"After discussions with the business owners, we decided we needed to conduct three separate campaigns. One would promote the play center to customers outside a 10 kilometre geographic radius, another would attract more mothers' groups to the center, and the third one would attract more party and group event bookings. Visitors to their website more than doubled compared with the same period last year. We knew we had developed a strong campaign — but to win the global competition is outstanding."</blockquote>The team and their professor are off to Mountain View, California for a tour of the Googleplex. To help in their ongoing studies, each team member will also receive an Apple MacBook Pro.<br /><br />There were also three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from James Madison University in the U.S., while a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the International College of Management in Sydney, Australia. Here are <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/2009winners.html">more details about our winners</a>.<br /><br />We developed the Challenge to benefit everyone involved. We're delighted that thousands of small businesses around the world have seen their online presence improved in just three weeks. Professors tell us that the Challenge has allowed them to deliver a unique, practical teaching and learning exercise. For those students that took part, we hope they have developed some useful online marketing skills which they can use when they graduate and enter the workforce.<br /><br />For anyone interested in competing in the 2010 Challenge, formal registrations will open later this year, but in the meantime you can <a href="http://services.google.com/events/marketing_challenge_2009_reg">register your interest</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Lee Hunter, Product Marketing Manager</span>

Announcing the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge winners

This year we held the second  Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition, launched last year , that gives undergra...

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Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students

We use the Internet all the time: at home, at work (especially at Google!), on the move, and, increasingly, at school. We believe that the Internet and cloud-based tools are a key part of a 21st century classroom, helping students learn and teachers teach in collaborative and innovative ways. Students use Google Docs to work on group projects; classrooms use Google Sites to show off their work; and teachers use Forms in Google Docs for instant grading and Google Calendar for lesson planning. <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu/">Google Apps Education Edition</a> is helping schools build online communities for students, teachers and parents, and we now have 4 million students using Google Apps Education around the world.<br /><br />This week the Google Apps Education team is launching a few new ways to make it easier for K-12 schools to use Google Apps, and attending the National Education Computing Conference (<a href="http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/">NECC</a>) in Washington D.C. To help address schools' email security needs, <a href="http://www.google.com/postini/email.html">Google Message Security</a> (GMS) will be offered free to current and new eligible primary and secondary schools globally that opt in by July of next year. GMS filters out email messaging threats, and education IT departments can customize the filtering rules and group messaging lists to suit their schools. We're also launching the <a href="http://edu.googleapps.com/">Google Apps Education Community site</a> for educators and students to share tips and ideas for using Google Apps in their classrooms, as well as the <a href="http://www.google.com/educators/p_websearch.html">Search Education Curriculum</a> and a <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/eduresources">Google Apps Education resource center</a> with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans for teachers. We'll be adding more to these resources going forward.<br /><br />If you're at NECC this year, come visit the Google team in booth #3148. If not, the teaching and learning continues with some cool <a href="http://edu.googleapps.com/tutorials-and-tips/necc-presentations">presentations and lesson plans</a> on the Google Apps Education Community site, or you can learn more at <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu">google.com/a/edu</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education team</span>

Google heads to grade school: New resources for K-12 teachers and students

We use the Internet all the time: at home, at work (especially at Google!), on the move, and, increasingly, at school. We believe that the I...

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Free webinar: Google Apps Education Edition

Around the world, schools and universities continuously face the difficult challenge of reducing costs while improving the quality of education they provide. This challenge becomes even more critical in turbulent economic times. Not to mention the fact that this next generation of students – the "<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=rM0&ei=oHUpSt6pDJXktAPE9tW5Cw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=millennials&spell=1">millennials</a>" – brings a different set of expectations to campus. For example, they expect the ability to work together without sitting in the same room, they want to take their data with them wherever they go, they want to chat (over voice and video) with friends and family, and they expect instantaneous and unwavering access to the Internet.<br /><br />By harnessing the power of technology, we think we can offer the education community the means to meet these expectations. <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu">Google Apps Education Edition</a> is a free suite of hosted tools including mail, calendar, document, and site creation that helps campuses save money while providing a rich set of technology tools that will enable schools to better meet the demands of savvy students. Millions of students, staff, and faculty are using Google Apps today, with more signing up every day. A big welcome to some of the schools we've recently welcomed to the Google Apps family, including:<br /><ul><li>Allegheny College</li><li>Beloit College</li><li>Boise State University (for faculty and staff)</li><li>Clemson University</li><li>Cornell University</li><li>Georgetown University</li><li>Pittsburgh State University</li><li>Southern Illinois University Carbondale</li><li>Temple University</li><li>Truman State University</li><li>University of Alaska</li><li>University of California at Davis</li><li>University of Minnesota</li><li>University of Sunderland</li><li>Wagner College</li></ul>To share info about these latest innovations, we'd like to invite you to a free live <a href="https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=572458080">customer webinar</a> on <span style="font-weight: bold;">Thursday, June 25</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">at 10:00 a.m. PDT</span>. In this session you'll hear directly from Arizona State University, the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/score-one-for-sun-devils.html">first school</a> to deploy Google Apps Education Edition, back in 2006. Key administrators will talk about their decision to go with Google Apps, the results they've seen so far, and their future plans for Apps. Whether you're a student, work at a school, or went to school, we hope you'll join us to hear about how Google Apps can help institutions like ASU save money and IT resources, plus make students' lives easier with a set of tools for working together.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Miriam Schneider, Apps EDU Marketing Team</span>

Free webinar: Google Apps Education Edition

Around the world, schools and universities continuously face the difficult challenge of reducing costs while improving the quality of educat...

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Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">1. Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country?<br /><br />2. Name this eastern European capital city, where a flight from the southeast would approach the city by flying over the Rhodope Mountains.<br /><br />3. Name this city in Oceania, the largest on South Island, where a flight from the west would approach the city by flying over the Southern Alps.</span><br /><br />If you're stumped, you're not alone! For 55 fourth- to eighth-graders, though, these sorts of questions represented the culmination of months of hard work studying maps and absorbing geographic knowledge.<div><br /></div><div>Earlier today I had the honor of speaking at the championship round of the <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geographybee/">2008-2009 National Geographic Bee</a> — moderated by Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek for the 21st year. This year, <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a> is sponsoring the Bee in support of its mission to raise awareness and support of geography education. Held at National Geographic’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and broadcast on public television stations across the country, the competition inspires and challenges students to better understand the world around them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Eric Yang, who didn't miss a single question in the finals, won on the third question of a tiebreaker round by answering the first question above. Eric, a 7th grader from Texas, has already scored 2200 on his SATs!<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It wasn't just the students who came away from the day re-energized and excited about geography. I was also lucky enough to meet a number of passionate educators like Rebecca Montgomery, a teacher from Mississippi, who administered the state bee there this year and told me that "the bee had a tremendous impact on our schools this year and I know now what we need to do to get kids ready to learn geography."</div><div><br />Here at Google, we're always excited to see how innovative teachers are using tools like <a href="http://www.google.com/educators/geo.html">Google Earth and Maps</a> to engage students by putting the world's geographic information at their fingertips. I'm particularly happy to have been part of the Bee today because geography and mapping were such a big part of what led me to help create Google Earth. I'm not the only Googler who fell in love with maps at an early age, though. Check out this video to see how some of my fellow mapmakers started down the path that eventually brought them to their current profession:<br /><br /><object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RMm-OwKy5t4&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RMm-OwKy5t4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />We'll be watching to see what lies ahead for today's passionate young geo whizzes. Congrats again to all the Bee competitors, and happy exploring!<br /><br />Answers: 1. ɐıuɐɯoɹ 2. ɐıɟos 3. ɥɔɹnɥɔʇsıɹɥɔ <div><br /><div><div><span class="byline-author">Posted by Brian McClendon, Director of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps</span></div></div></div></div>

Congratulations Eric Yang, winner of the 2008-2009 National Geographic Bee

1. Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country? 2. Name this ea...

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More tools and tricks for teachers

Hello teachers,<br /><br />We hope that your desk was deluged with a bunch of shined-up apples this morning as a thank you from your students for all that you do for them every day. At Google, we'd like to thank you as well, and acknowledge that we wouldn't be where we are today if it hadn't been for the great teachers who mentored us through school.<br /><br />In support of <a href="https://www.nea.org/grants/1359.htm">National Teacher Day</a>, we'd like to announce that applications are open for our next <a href="http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html">Google Teacher Academy</a>, which will take place in our <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=google+boulder&sll=40.022291,-105.26134&sspn=0.008183,0.017896&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=40.022586,-105.26119&spn=0.00866,0.01869&z=16&iwloc=A">Boulder, Colorado office</a> on Wednesday, August 5th. The Google Teacher Academy is a free professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products, which will help you bring communication, collaboration and fun into your classrooms. Teachers will also learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region. <a href="http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html">Applications</a> are due Friday, July 3rd.<br /><br />We'd also like to thank our cadre of Google Certified Teachers, who spread all kinds of professional development love every day. Specifically, we'd like to highlight GCT Jerome Burg, whose <a href="http://www.googlelittrips.org/">Google Lit Trips</a> was recently awarded the <a href="http://asiasociety.org/education/prizes/home.htm">2008 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize</a> for Excellence in International Education in Media and Technology. Google Lit Trips uses the technologies of <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a> and social networking to bring literature to life through virtual mapping. By placing markers on Google Earth tracking the journeys of characters from literature and populating those placemarks with a wide variety of supplemental resources, students can “ride along as virtual passengers” on the same journey the characters are taking. The site gives teachers access to previously constructed Google Lit Trips as well as the ability to interact and post new trips online. Congratulations, Jerome — you couldn't have made us prouder!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE6YltVd78r0yTVnqC31cSNttBAkHtMKFOlzlEFCoQ6WlsFolFEw3T_MzlJNnNAcxrGc35C460x9ZOZRwavWqokx3xG18NigK6zyPny607gq75Hck-O3jjwoUyeIlWIqtLD7n5tKoBwujk/s1600-h/candide_3.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332568671784206354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE6YltVd78r0yTVnqC31cSNttBAkHtMKFOlzlEFCoQ6WlsFolFEw3T_MzlJNnNAcxrGc35C460x9ZOZRwavWqokx3xG18NigK6zyPny607gq75Hck-O3jjwoUyeIlWIqtLD7n5tKoBwujk/s400/candide_3.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 394px; height: 309px;" /></a><span class="byline-author"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update: </span>Corrected the application due date.<br /><br />Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing Manager</span>

More tools and tricks for teachers

Hello teachers, We hope that your desk was deluged with a bunch of shined-up apples this morning as a thank you from your students for all t...

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Google's 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit

Our <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Brandschenkestrasse+110+8002+Z%C3%BCrich+Switzerland&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=ZszHSdWIDYKOsQPen6HgBg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title">Zurich office</a> was proud to host Google's second annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions) Faculty Summit last month. Eighty leading academics joined us from 66 universities in 24 countries for this three-day event.<br /><br />The Faculty Summit's purpose is to increase collaboration between key universities and our engineering teams. This year, we organised more than 40 talks and presentations, plus panels, networking and social events to help our guests learn more about Google's work in their regions. In return, Googlers gained valuable insight into challenges faced by the region's universities and new developments in the academic world. Event highlights included a keynote by leading cryptographer and Turing Award winner Adi Shamir on the topic of privacy and security as related to cloud computing. Further discussion centered on topics ranging from the power and limitations of cryptographic technology to usability issues introduced by security requirements, with some debate over the balance between preventing abuse and identifying and reporting abusers.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#spector">Alfred Spector</a> (VP of Research), Jeff Walz (University Relations) and I spoke about Google's engineering efforts and the impact of our university relations initiatives, with much discussion focusing on our involvement in the Arab and African regions. Rapidly expanding markets in the Middle East and Africa represent a major engineering challenge for us, and we are eager to continue collaboration with leading academic attendees from the region well beyond the Summit. We were pleased to welcome representatives from the Al Arabiya news channel, who highlighted this topic in a recent broadcast. We also heard from Google 'Research Award' and 'CS4HS' (Computer Science for High School) grant recipients and EMEA-based academics spending long-term sabbaticals at Google, who described their experiences over the past year.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloocDo1m14fgSPaeNRYTo-Szsh-F6yokTKe1FmDIrmBc-sAorh0S417luit-NlQNDiEamCOfL5JYj1XyFX1LsHfr1g4mVN6UtmGg8yNoSsbNvINoRVN0BnYWZOeYvxPh4vQGy6MDcYLi8/s1600-h/_mg_6766.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317164078926582530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloocDo1m14fgSPaeNRYTo-Szsh-F6yokTKe1FmDIrmBc-sAorh0S417luit-NlQNDiEamCOfL5JYj1XyFX1LsHfr1g4mVN6UtmGg8yNoSsbNvINoRVN0BnYWZOeYvxPh4vQGy6MDcYLi8/s400/_mg_6766.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a><br />This year also saw new additions to the Faculty Summit agenda, including a networking session allowing academics to discuss collaboration options one-on-one with specific Google engineers. This session spurred a great deal of activity — for instance, multiple Googlers are booked to deliver guest lectures at external events and universities and several attendees have been invited to present their findings on research ranging from 'Software Visualisation' to 'Mobile Agile Testing' at Google engineering offices across EMEA. We plan to make these networking sessions a focal point at future Faculty Summits!<br /><br />I'd like to thank the organising team for their help in planning and executing this important event for the second year running. The 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit proved to be an incisive and informative event resulting in new academic and industrial collaborations. We look forward to reporting back on these synergies as they develop over the next year!<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Nelson Mattos, VP of Engineering</span>

Google's 2009 EMEA Faculty Summit

Our Zurich office was proud to host Google's second annual EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions) Faculty Summit last month. Ei...

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Schools get the "App"titude across the globe

Since the launch of <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu">Google Apps Education Edition</a> in October 2006, millions of people at thousands of schools in more than 100 countries have been using our free email and collaboration tools. We love hearing from newly deployed schools like <a href="http://www.lmu.edu/">Loyola Marymount University</a>, <a href="http://www.westmont.edu/">Westmont College</a>, <a href="http://www.njit.edu/">New Jersey Institute of Technology</a>, <a href="http://www.kpbsd.k12.ak.us/">Kenai Peninsula Borough School District</a>, <a href="http://www.chapman.edu/">Chapman University</a>, <a href="http://www.ignatius.edu/s/237/home.aspx">Saint Ignatius High School</a>, and <a href="http://www.csuchico.edu/">California State University, Chico</a> (to name a few) about how they're now able to use Apps in teaching, learning, and researching on campus, while also saving time and money.<br /><br />While we continue to see more and more U.S. schools moving to Google Apps, we find it especially exciting to see that the trend of outsourcing online communication and collaboration needs is catching on in other parts of the world. In Australia, for example, the New South Wales Department of Education <a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24966636-15318,00.html">recently migrated</a> 1.5 million students to Google Apps. The University of Adelaide also just <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news31901.html">announced</a> that it is offering to its 16,000 students email services and other online tools as part of the Apps suite, at no cost to the university. Many other schools and colleges in this region have also recently deployed Google Apps, including <a href="http://www.hsc.edu.tw/">Hsin Sheng College of Medical Care and Management</a> in Taoyuan County Taiwan, <a href="http://www.au.edu.pk/">Air University</a> in Islamabad Pakistan, <a href="http://www.uph.edu/">Univesitas Pelita Harapan</a> in Indonesia, the <a href="http://www.icms.edu.au/">International College of Management</a> in Sydney, and schools across New Zealand like <a href="http://www.fendalton.school.nz/">Fendalton School</a>.<br /><br />To help spread the word about Apps, the team in India came up with the <a href="http://www.google.co.in/apps/gottheapptitude/index.html">Got the "App"titude Challenge</a>, which encouraged students, faculty members and alumni from all engineering and management schools throughout India to move their institutions to Google Apps. The challenge created quite a stir, and after launching in August, we received almost 6,000 sign-ups. Each college team consisted of students, alumni and faculty who worked closely with IT staff to identify challenges in their existing email and collaboration solutions. Working with a Googler, the teams then demonstrated ways Google Apps could be used to address these challenges. The performance of each team was evaluated by measuring product usage after their deployment.<br /><br />We'd like to extend our congratulations to the XL CONNECT team from <a href="http://www.xlri.ac.in/">Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur</a>, who won the challenge by demonstrating the highest usage of Google Apps products.<br /><br />As a result of the challenge, more than 100 colleges across India are now in the process of implementing Apps in their institutions. And we look forward to seeing more and more schools all over the world adopt Google Apps.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFPjvBD5h1TIRmAl9tyqe6UYRKLCz3a9SY2QnclEN6Gkd0GlxR6D8PR0ABUmCo5XZhjjl0VNkBuR50e20N37EkNehNQ0uMZJEWTD5SWtpTxxNIYOV-qDtVX-WqG-fZKfLDSYlE9RqSZ2k/s1600-h/Picture+12.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312368619552880722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFPjvBD5h1TIRmAl9tyqe6UYRKLCz3a9SY2QnclEN6Gkd0GlxR6D8PR0ABUmCo5XZhjjl0VNkBuR50e20N37EkNehNQ0uMZJEWTD5SWtpTxxNIYOV-qDtVX-WqG-fZKfLDSYlE9RqSZ2k/s400/Picture+12.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 197px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Countries shaded in blue represent active Apps users in that area. </span></div></span><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Amarpreet Singh, Online Sales and Operations Manager, and Andrew Mitchell, Senior Strategist</span>

Schools get the "App"titude across the globe

Since the launch of Google Apps Education Edition in October 2006, millions of people at thousands of schools in more than 100 countries ha...

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Students share their Apps stories

You might remember <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/appy-trails.html">reading</a> about our trip "<a href="http://www.google.com/apps/bus">App to School</a>," when we hit the road in our retro biofuel bus to visit ten universities across the U.S. One of our main goals of this trip was to hear from the technology experts themselves -- the students -- about how they are using tools like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Talk in interesting ways to be more effective on and off campus.<br /><br />Luckily we had a video camera along for the ride, and we filmed a bunch of students telling their stories. We'll share one of these videos a week for the next few months on the <a href="http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/">Google Students blog</a>, so you can hear from the students themselves and hopefully learn a few new ways to use these products.<br /><br />Here's one student who uses Calendar to manage lab studies with his classmates:<br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Auqou1zRZnM&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Auqou1zRZnM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br />If you want to make sure you catch all the latest videos and stay up to date about other news and tips for students, you can <a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/GoogleStudentBlog">subscribe</a> to the Student blog. Can't wait another week to see more videos? Check out our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=655FDD3AF048626E">playlist</a>. And if you have your own story to share, we encourage you to upload it as a response.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span>

Students share their Apps stories

You might remember reading about our trip " App to School ," when we hit the road in our retro biofuel bus to visit ten universit...

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The latest on Google Apps for Education

It was exactly two years ago at the <a href="http://net.educause.edu/e08" id="jk45" target="_blank" title="Educause conference">EDUCAUSE conference</a> that we first announced our free <a href="http://google.com/a/edu" id="u4hu" target="_blank" title="Google Apps">Google Apps</a> offering for educational institutions. We've kept pretty busy in that time, working closely with thousands of schools to reach 2.5 million students, staff, and faculty actively using Google Apps on campuses across the globe. As part of this mission, we also recently drove our <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/bus" id="zdsj" target="_blank" title="eco-friendly bus">eco-friendly bus</a> (think bio-fuel and solar panels) to universities across the country to hear directly from people using Google Apps. Here's what some of them had to say:<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PFkMkho3agc&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PFkMkho3agc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />One thing hasn't changed in the last two years: Google Apps still offers academic institutions, from neighborhood schools to international universities, free integrated solutions for email, calendaring, and online document and site sharing. We're glad to be back at EDUCAUSE this week in Orlando to reminisce about how far technology in education has come since 2006, and to look forward toward even more possibilities for innovation.<br /><br />If you're involved in education, check out <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu" id="obc4" target="_blank" title="Google Apps">Google Apps</a> to see if it can help make your school a more effective learning community. And if you're a student, visit the newly launched <a href="http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/" id="uhk7" target="_blank" title="Google for Students Blog">Google for Students Blog</a> to find Google-related information relevant to you.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span>

The latest on Google Apps for Education

It was exactly two years ago at the EDUCAUSE conference that we first announced our free Google Apps offering for educational institutions...

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Information poverty

Today is <a href="http://blogactionday.org/">Blog Action Day</a>, an annual event that rallies blogs around the world to post about a common cause. This year's issue up for discussion is poverty, so we wanted to take a look at the relationship between access to information and social and economic development. The right information at the right time in the hands of people has enormous power. As someone who works for Google, I see evidence of this everyday as people search and find information they need to create knowledge, grow their business, or access essential services. But that applies primarily to the rich world, where economies are built on knowledge and presume access to information. What about the poor and developing countries where people are offline more than online? How do they benefit from the power of information?<br /><br />In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, rates of economic growth over the last decade have exceeded 5% every year. Despite this trend, poverty in many countries has remained constant. In Kenya, for example, the official poverty rate was 48% in 1981 (World Bank, June 2008). According to the <a href="http://www.hackenya.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=254&gid=519">Kenya Poverty and Inequality Assessment</a> released by the World Bank this year, 17 million Kenyans or 47% of the population were unable to meet the costs of food sufficient to fulfill basic daily caloric requirements. The vast majority of these people live in rural areas and have even less access to the information that impacts their daily life. Data on water quality, education and health budgets, and agricultural prices are nearly impossible to access.<br /><br />Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on providing basic public services like primary education, health, water, and sanitation to poor communities, poverty in much of Sub-Saharan Africa persists. Where does this money go, who gets it, and what are the results of the resources invested? That’s where we find a big black hole of information and a lack of basic accountability. How do inputs (dollars spent) turn into outputs (schools, clinics, and wells), and, more importantly, how do outputs translate into results (literate and healthy children, clean water, etc.)?<br /><br />We simply don’t know the answers to most of these basic questions. But what if we could? What if a mother could find out how much money was budgeted for her daughter's school each year and how much of it was received? What if she and other parents could report how often teachers are absent from school or whether health clinics have the medicines they are supposed to carry? What if citizens could access and report on basic information to determine value for money as tax payers?<br /><br />The work of The Social Development Network (SODNET) in Kenya is illustrative. They are developing a simple budget-tracking tool that allows citizens to track the allocation, use, and ultimate result of government funds earmarked for infrastructure projects in their districts. The tool is intended to create transparency in the use of tax revenues and answer the simple question: Are resources reaching their intended beneficiaries? Using tools like maps, they are able to overlay information that begins to tell a compelling story.<br /><br />Google.org’s role, through <a href="http://www.google.org/projects.html">our partners</a> in East Africa and India, is to support, catalyze, and widely disseminate this kind of information to public, private, and civil society stakeholders that can use it to see more clearly what’s working, what’s broken and what are potential solutions. Leveraging platforms like Google Earth and Google Maps can help organizations disseminate their content widely and let people see and understand what was once invisible. Once information is visible, widely known, and easy to understand, we are betting that governments and citizens will pay more attention to leakages in the service delivery pipeline and feel empowered to propose solutions.<br /><br />You can’t change what you can’t see. The power to know plus the power to act on what you know is the surest way to achieve positive social change from the bottom up. And when we consider the magnitude of resources invested in delivering public services each year, a 10% improvement globally would exceed the value of all foreign aid. We believe that is a bet worth making.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Cross-posted from the </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://blog.google.org/2008/10/information-poverty.html">Google.org blog</a><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Aleem Walji, Head of Global Development Initiatives, Google.org</span>

Information poverty

Today is Blog Action Day , an annual event that rallies blogs around the world to post about a common cause. This year's issue up for di...

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This year's Faculty Summit

Recently we hosted more than 90 distinguished faculty members from roughly 60 North American universities to the Googleplex for the <a href="http://www.google.com/events/facultysummit2008/agenda.html">4th Annual North American Faculty Summit</a>.<br /><br />This annual event is both an opportunity for us to showcase our latest research and products, and a chance to deepen our relationship with the academic community. Faculty have the chance to network with colleagues and students-turned-Googlers, and to learn about opportunities for collaboration with Google.<br /><br />Some of this year's highlights:<br /><ul><li>Roundtables - small group discussions with senior engineers</li><li>API demos - introducing applications of our most popular APIs: Google Data, Open Social, Geo, and Android</li><li>A technical panel I hosted, "Computing at Scale: Challenges and Opportunities" - comprised of Googlers Rob Pike and Urs Hoelzle as well as Jeanette Wing, Assistant Director for Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation, and Ed Lazowska, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington</li><li>Visits from our CEO, Eric Schmidt, who dropped by the opening cocktail reception, plus founders Larry & Sergey, who mingled at the reception and conducted the closing Q&A</li></ul>You can watch videos of the talks on our <a href="http://research.google.com/university/relations/">University Relations website</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Alfred Spector, VP of Research & Special Initiatives</span>

This year's Faculty Summit

Recently we hosted more than 90 distinguished faculty members from roughly 60 North American universities to the Googleplex for the 4th Annu...

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Appy trails

A few weeks ago <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/07/enterprise-blog-post-announcing-bus.html" id="j2gy" target="_blank" title="we announced">we announced</a> our adventurous (some call it crazy) plan to drive across the US in an eco-friendly retrofitted 1970s bus, visiting ten college campuses that have deployed <a href="http://google.com/a/edu" id="jk41" title="Google Apps Education Edition">Google Apps Education Edition</a>. Well, we just hit the street, and starting this week we will be visiting thousands of college students across the country to hear how Google Apps is helping them to <a href="http://google.com/apps/students" id="n1.-" target="_blank" title="bring learning into the cloud">bring learning into the cloud</a>. You can keep up with the bus at <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/bus" id="bulk" target="_blank" title="www.google.com/apps/bus">www.google.com/apps/bus</a> through maps, photos, videos, and live blog posts on our recently launched the <a href="http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/" id="p0ds" target="_blank" title="Google for Students blog">Google Students blog</a>.<br /><br />In addition to the bus, a few other things are getting us excited, like the <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-bus-goes-app-to-school.html" id="n_jw">17 new schools</a> that have chosen Google Apps in the last few weeks, taking us to over two million active users. And then there's a new feature to celebrate: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWzwLGJ0BIo" id="v2tk" target="_blank" title="Google Video for Education">Google Video for Apps</a>, which enables schools to securely share videos of recorded classes, lectures, school events, and more.<br /><br />With these developments, I guess it's "so long" to summer. It really is time for us to head <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfSw7EUP0VE" id="rb9r">App to School</a>...<br /><br /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2FApptoSchool%2Falbumid%2F5243782232803070769%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" width="288" height="192"></embed><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager</span>

Appy trails

A few weeks ago we announced our adventurous (some call it crazy) plan to drive across the US in an eco-friendly retrofitted 1970s bus, vis...

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Back to school with more than 1 million users worldwide

Google Apps is rapidly gaining momentum in education. We now have more than a million people on campuses worldwide actively using Google's suite of email, calendar and docs to share information and study. This makes perfect sense. Schools have always been a proving ground for innovative ideas. And as we prepare for the new school year, we are happy to welcome more than a dozen universities across the U.S., joining the thousands of other schools that have already embraced cloud computing in education. Here are the new additions:<br /><ul><li>Collin County Community College District</li><li>Francis Marion University</li><li>George Washington University</li><li>Indiana University</li><li>Kean University</li><li>Kent State University</li><li>Kishwaukee College</li><li>Loyola Marymount University</li><li>Montgomery County Community College</li><li>New Jersey Institute of Technology</li><li>University of Florida</li><li>University of San Diego</li><li>University of Virginia</li></ul> This is really just the beginning. As we continue working to make it easier to communicate and collaborate online, we are going to meet with some of the top technology experts -- the students themselves. For the entire month of September, we are heading "<a title="App to School" href="http://www.google.com/apps/edu/bus/index.html" id="roir">App to School</a>" by embarking on a cross-country bus tour to visit campuses, listen to students and learn more about how cloud computing is helping education. Please check out our <a title="Enterprise blog" href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2008/07/enterprise-blog-post-announcing-bus.html" id="vr8m">Enterprise blog</a> for more info.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by </span>Jeff Keltner<span class="byline-author">, Business Development Manager, Google Apps<br /></span>

Back to school with more than 1 million users worldwide

Google Apps is rapidly gaining momentum in education. We now have more than a million people on campuses worldwide actively using Google'...

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Students surf their way to success

Early on in my career at Google I was approached by a former professor of mine, Jamie Murphy, who was eager to give his students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Apart from delivering a great learning experience, Jamie wanted to make sure that his students would leave university with skills they could take directly into the workforce.<br /><br />Together, Jamie and I recruited a panel of professors from all over the globe and came up with the <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/2008winners.html">Google Online Marketing Challenge</a>. Student teams had to identify a local business with a website, but no experience of online marketing, and then were given free Google AdWords vouchers worth the equivalent of US$200. The student teams worked with the local business to set up an AdWords account and structure an online marketing campaign which would increase web traffic and sales for the local business. The teams had three weeks to run the campaign and had to submit their campaign report to a panel of international academic judges.<br /><br />Today we're announcing the winners: an innovative team from the University of Western Australia who worked with an indoor rock-climbing school that scaled the heights and scooped the global prize. The winners will be whisked off to Mountain View, California for a tour of the Googleplex and meet with the creators of AdWords and other executives. To help them in their ongoing studies, each team member will also receive an Apple MacBook Pro.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOorGyh86tBbnTmSRqYpW0iMc452H4RpGnsc5Qqn-qm6DkxpuPOh4mPmPzLZ404TzzTdhHFc6KJ9UVbpxXJn2nQ6pHGWeXWuQE9aURphHD6I2D0J5T6Fuuh8t40rpXnCeY0ys8Ni1_DW6a/s1600-h/MktgChall_winners.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223414087197189090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOorGyh86tBbnTmSRqYpW0iMc452H4RpGnsc5Qqn-qm6DkxpuPOh4mPmPzLZ404TzzTdhHFc6KJ9UVbpxXJn2nQ6pHGWeXWuQE9aURphHD6I2D0J5T6Fuuh8t40rpXnCeY0ys8Ni1_DW6a/s320/MktgChall_winners.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">L to R: Dr. Fang Liu, Glen Linthorne (from the partner business),<br />Victor Tsen (hanging), Amy Smith, Aaron Balm, and Lauren Bobridge. Absent: Anna Usikov.<br /></span></div><p></p> There were also three regional winners, including students from Pennsylvania State University, who won in the fierce Americas field, while a team from the Universität Bern in Switzerland beat some impressive competition to win for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific winners came from the Australian Graduate School of Management with a skillful campaign for a small specialty cake business (actually based in California).<br /><br />These four teams were clearly deserving winners, but the enthusiasm all the students and professors showed for the challenge was inspiring. We initially expected slightly more than 1,000 students to take part, and were thrilled when c. 8,500 students from 47+ countries put their marketing skills to the test.<br /><br />The success of the challenge and the positive feedback we've had from both professors and students was more than we had hoped for. As Dr. Fang Liu, who taught the winning team, notes:<br /><p></p> <p id="emd116" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote>“The Online Marketing Challenge offers a great opportunity for students to develop their skills and experience in online marketing. Local businesses also benefit as the AdWords campaigns have helped promote their business to a wider community. I feel absolutely thrilled that one of my student teams is the global winner." </blockquote>We're delighted to have worked with professors to find a fun and innovative way to introduce online marketing into the university curriculum. And we're happy to say the Challenge will carry on next year, and we hope it will go from strength to strength. Here are <a href="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/about.html">more details on the Challenge and our winners</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Lee Hunter, Product Marketing Manager</span>

Students surf their way to success

Early on in my career at Google I was approached by a former professor of mine, Jamie Murphy, who was eager to give his students hands-on ex...

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Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage." We and other forward-looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring such people. What are we looking for?<br /><br />At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a matter of course. After all, that's what most education is concerned with. But the non-routine problems offer the opportunity to create competitive advantage, and solving those problems requires creative thought and tenacity.<br /><br />Here's a real-life example, a challenge a team of our engineers once faced: designing a spell-checker for the Google search engine. The routine solution would be to run queries through a dictionary. The non-routine, creative solution is to use the query corrections and refinements that other users have made in the past to offer spelling suggestions for new queries. This approach enables us to correct all the words that aren't in the dictionary, helping many more users in the process.<br /><br />How do we find these non-routine savants? There are many factors, of course, but we primarily look for ...<br /><br />... <span style="font-weight: bold;">analytical reasoning</span>. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.<br /><br />... <span style="font-weight: bold;">communication skills</span>. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions. <br /><br />... <span style="font-weight: bold;">a willingness to experiment</span>. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don't like it.<br /><br />... <span style="font-weight: bold;">team players</span>. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations.<br /><br />... <span style="font-weight: bold;">passion and leadership</span>. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.<br /><br />These characteristics are not just important in our business, but in every business, as well as in government, philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how to acquire them. It's easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many required skills will change: developers today code in something called Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities. <br /><br />And then keep on challenging yourself, because learning doesn't end with graduation. In fact, in the real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered problems are not in the back of the textbook, the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management</span>

Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning

Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for com...

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