Building the Future of the Classroom with Google for Education

Editor’s Note: This week, we’re joining thousands of educators and students at ISTE in Philadelphia. Visit us at booth 2200, where you can demo the latest Chromebook devices and classroom technology from Google and our partners.  Follow along on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

In order to build technology to help students learn, we try to imagine where the future of education is going. The recent Future of the Classroom Global Report identifies emerging trends in education, backed by research. Here’s how our products and initiatives line up with each of those trends: 

Emerging technologies

With Google Expeditions, students can go on virtual field trips—and there are 1,000 tours to pick from, including Carmen Sandiego tours published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Through the rest of the rest of the year, we’re rolling out an improved Expeditions experience across many Chrome OS devices. Check here to see if your device is compatible.

Students can also use Tour Creator—which was just recognized as an AASL 2019 Best Website for Teaching & Learning—to create their own virtual reality tours. They can take fellow students or parents on tours of their town or school using the Expeditions App.

Innovating teaching 

We’re continuing to grow the Teacher Center, our library of free online trainings for educators. For teachers getting started with our tools for the first time, we’ve added courses for Expeditions and G Suite Editors (Google Docs and Slides ) to complement the existing trainings on Classroom, Forms, and Jamboard. 

We’ve also created shorter courses across a variety of topics, like helping teachers support English language learners, how to use Chromebook accessibility features, or how to get started with our CS First and Applied Digital Skills curriculums. 

And for educators who want to get the most out of Google technology, local experts are there to help. Check out our network of trainers, innovators, reference schools and local PD partners on our newly re-designed EDU Directory.  

Coaching in the classroom

For educators to benefit from investments in technology, they need to know how to integrate it into their classrooms. The Dynamic Learning Project trains teachers on how to effectively use classroom technology, and we have a new training curriculum for administrators, teaching them how to support instructional coaches in their schools. 

We’re also helping school administrators quantify their organization’s Google for Education implementation across products (G Suite and Chromebooks) and programs (Certification and Transformation) with the launch of the EDU Transformation Report. 

Additionally, we’ve expanded our resources to help school and district leaders think about centering equity in their school’s transformation. So we created a new Educational Equity page with resources and case studies to help school leaders understand how equity can be a central characteristic in all seven pillars of the Transformation Framework. 

Digital Responsibility 

Applied Digital Skills has seven new lessons focused on digital wellbeing. Teachers can use these free, project-based lessons to teach students to build healthy digital habits, avoid online scams, understand their digital footprint, and more. 

Life Skills and Workforce Preparation

Applied Digital Skills also has new lessons that prepare middle and high school students to use G Suite fluently in college, the workforce and beyond. To prove their mastery, students can take the professional G Suite certification and add it to resumes and applications. Other new lessons focus on introducing students to machine learning, making art with Google Sheets, calculating probability, and exploring women’s history.  

Computational Thinking

CS First, our coding curriculum for students in elementary and middle school, has a new professional development session for teachers to integrate coding activities into English Language Arts, math and science classes. 

Acquired by Google last year, Workbench is a content library for educators to discover, create, remix, and share lessons and resources. At ISTE we’re announcing a new integration with the Workbench Blockly programming canvas and Google Sheets. This enables people to build Blockly programs to control multiple bluetooth devices (robots, drones, sensors, microcontrollers) and send that data to or retrieve data from Google Sheets. 

We’re honored to be a part of a global community of educators and parents who help their students develop problem-solving skills, safely navigate the digital world, and prepare for future careers. As classrooms continue to evolve, our products to help educators and students evolve as well.