Growing up in the late seventies in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, technology wasn't really a part of my educational life. My teachers graded printouts and the idea of collaborating with my classmates on a project anytime, anywhere just wasn't possible. Not to mention, we didn't have a computer at home and working on the Internet was still a pipe dream for a middle schooler. Things have changed since I was in middle school of course, and there are people working hard to bring technology into classrooms to help students learn and teachers teach. Today Oregon is taking a huge step in that direction — they're the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state. Starting today, the Oregon Department of Education will offer Google Apps to all the school districts in the state — helping teachers, staff and students use Gmail, Docs, Sites, Video, Groups and more within their elementary, middle and high schools. School funding has been hit hard over the past couple of years, and Oregon is no exception. This move is going to save the Department of Education $1.5 million per year — big bucks for a hurting budget. With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build websites or email teachers about a project. Their documents and email will live online in the cloud — so they'll be able to work from a classroom or a computer lab, at home or at the city (or county) library. And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way. It's critical that students learn how to use the kind of productivity technology they'll need throughout their lives, and Oregon is helping students across the state do just that. It blows my mind to think about how far technology in the classroom has come since I was in school, and how far we still have to go to make sure kids in classrooms everywhere have access to these tech resources. Cloud computing tools like Google Apps are one way teachers, schools — and now a whole state — are addressing the issue. Oh, and alis volat propriis? That's the Oregon motto. It means "she flies by her own wings" — makes perfect sense for a state heading to the cloud.      |
Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:00 PM PDT One of the great things about the web is choice. There's a website out there for nearly everything, and sometimes there are many sites all dedicated to a single topic. But how can you find all the sites that are related to the subject that interests you? This week, we launched a search feature that helps you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones with which you're already familiar. For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the "Similar" link that's on the same line as the "www.directrelief.org/" URL, you'll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts. We've offered a "Similar" feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn't been too visible. Since we've been continuously improving this feature and we think it's really useful, we're now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently. Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we'll display a list of "Pages similar" at the bottom of the results page. For example, this is the list of sites similar to Direct Relief International:  These sites might provide alternative ways to contribute to Haiti or Chile, like AmeriCares and Operation USA. Or they could provide a different perspective or approach, like giving more broadly through a blood donation at the Red Cross. We hope this feature helps you discover many useful websites that you didn't know about before and get a better understanding of all the choices the web has to offer.     |
Monday, May 3, 2010
Alis volat propriis: Oregon’s bringing Google Apps to classrooms statewide
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