Have you been getting into the Google + sandbox and playing around? Trying to figure out where it fits, and maybe how it might be helpful in education? Me, too. Along with plenty of others – I have read estimates that Google+ users already number 2 to 4 million!

Luckily, some of those front-runners did some research for the rest of us.

Here are a few resources, ideas, and thoughts from others that might help us both gain some perspective, as well as some tips and tricks.

Google+ contributor and Mac pioneer talks with CNET (Q&A)
Read this for some insights into the big picture of Google +.
<excerpt>
Q: I’ll come back to Circles in a second, but can you just give me kind of a high-level view of what G+ is? What was the intent for Google+, and what are you hoping to do with it?
Hertzfeld: Sure. Everything on the Web can be improved by knowledge of your social connections, so Google+ is an effort to…add a social layer to Google, to YouTube, to Google Search, to every Google property. And so the core of Google+ are some APIs and applications that let you organize [and] maintain your identity through a profile and organize the people you know. Really, one of the main contributions we’re making compared to the status quo is giving you much finer grain control over your sharing. You know, instead of just having an undifferentiated mass of people, we make it really easy and at the forefront of the UI to send some things to some people, other things to others.

An Introduction to Google+
EdReach has a series of pretty good posts that explain what Google+ is, and how it might be used in education.
Here are the titles in the series:

An Intro to Google+
Circle Me Up: Exploring “circles”
Let’s Hangout: connecting through “hangouts”
Light the fire: learning through “sparks”
Going Mobile with Google+
Where can we go from here?

<excerpt>
“For this second post, we wanted to give readers more of an insight and a “how to get started” look into Google+.  As you get in to Google+, we hope that you’ll find these walk through screencasts helpful.”

Google’s Six-Front War
<excerpt>
“Google+ is their social sword and shield to fight back and capture user data, despite it being late in the game.”

Google+ – A Collaborative Document
This is a collaborative document in Google docs. Full of great tips.
<excerpt>
“Circles – Enable you to organize contacts into groups for sharing across various Google products and services. Although other users can view the list of people in your collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. Organization is done through a drag-and-drop interface.

To understand Google Plus and Circles better, go to the Settings Gear and select Profile and Privacy. Look for “See how your profile looks to other users.” Type in a user name from different circles and click Preview to see what your profile looks like from the specified user.”

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Google+
Here you will find links to lots of other articles.

Google + Tips and Shortcuts
This is a collection of tips on how to use the various apps included in Google+.
<excerpt>
“Share G+ posts on Twitter and translate them with Google Translate. Nice.”

The Google + 50 by Chris Brogan
<excerpt>
“A standalone Google+ Apps version plus Google Docs = a very powerful business collaboration environment that would trump most white label social enterprise tech easily.”

Simon Laustsen’s Google+ Cheat Sheet
Full of nice shortcuts.

40 Google Plus Tips for Newbies
<excerpt>
Circles – When adding friend you’ll be able to specify a circle to put them in. When doing so there is also an option to create a new circle when adding a friend. Circles are used to organize friends. Many ways to think of these circles. Based on affinity, like work, church, family, and extended family. Or you could go a little more military as De Niro and Stiller’s in “Meet the Parents”. Either way, circles make it pretty easy to put friends in order fast in Google Plus.

What does Google+ Mean for Schools?
<excerpt>
“Instead of only holding class in school, teachers will be able to teach their students online (ten at a time) through Hangouts.  They could teach new material, review information from class, share videos, answer questions, and more, all in a virtual class meeting.”

Let me know if you have resources to share – leave a comment with the link.

Google’s recent teacher newsletter had two items that I decided to investigate further.

The first is a google doc slide show: Google Apps in Classrooms and Schools, 32 Ways to Use Google Apps in 50 Minutes. I didn’t learn any new application of Google Apps for the classroom, but I do think I could share this slide deck with teachers and that some would find ideas new to them.

The second item was: YOUTUBE EDU Adds Teacher-Focused Content

“Earlier this quarter YouTube EDU began to broaden its scope of offerings to include educational content for all ages.  Already home to lectures from 400 of the world’s leading universities, YouTube EDU expanded its reach to include Khan Academy as well as teacher training content, signing its first ever teacher-focused EDU partner, Teaching Channel. Teaching Channel is a Gates Foundation-funded organization that provides professional development and best practices to teachers. Their videos range from Lesson Ideas, discussions about teaching with instructional experts, to “Tough to Teach” tips.  Check out http://www.YouTube.com/EDU for more great high-quality educational content!”

I checked out some of the content in YOUTUBE EDU. There are lectures and non-lecture videos from several universities – colleges have their own dedicated video channels, author chats (I watched a good Tina Fey interview), and content like a hummingbird at a feeder. This is worth checking out periodically; I’m sure it will continue to grow.

A METAA-organized professional development day at Google Cambridge Headquarters was a great success today. We had a really good turnout of participants and the presentations were engaging, interesting, and full of information. Google presenters included Stephen Vinter, Jaime Casap, Dana Nguyen. A presentation about Google Books was also extremely interesting, but I can’t find the presenter’s name in my notes (sorry).

If you have deployed (or are thinking about deploying) Google Apps for Education, there are a few resources you should know about. The Google Apps Education Training Center is a fantastic resource – this is a richly hyperlinked tutorial to using Google Apps for Edu.

The Google Apps for Education Certification program offers online training modules and a series of exams to become a certified educator. Once you are a certified educator and have done extensive teacher training and Apps deployment support you can apply for individual Certified Trainer status. If your organization has 3 or more Certified Trainers and meets some additional requirements you can apply to have it listed as a Certified Trainer program.

To find out more about the book project:
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html

To see an amazing 3D human body app:
http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/

At the recent annual ACT Meeting Larry Berger, chief executive officer and co-founder of Wireless Generation, presented on “Google Fast and Apple Simple: The Critical Interdependency between Technology and Information Solutions.” In his presentation, he explained that for educators to use data to make decisions about teaching, differentiation, and student-learning, the systems have to be as simple as an Apple computer or device to use and the data needs to be returned fast, Google fast.

That’s a description I can get behind. In Massachusetts we have a statewide Data Warehouse provided by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). It is built on Cognos and is a centralized K-12 data storage and analysis tool that is free and available to all public schools. It is unwieldy to use and painfully slow. Principals and curriculum leaders in my district have complained bitterly that even in the evening during non-peak hours they sit waiting for over 30 or 40 minutes for reports to run, if they complete at all. Complaints showered upon the DESE from all over the state, and they are now promising that upgrades are in the pipeline, but it may be too little, too late. We’ll see if they can restore confidence after the tepid recent performance.

The phrase “Google fast and Apple simple” has now taken root in my thoughts and I’ve decided I want to hold it up as a standard for all our software providers.

How fast should it run? Google fast. Google anticipates the end of my query and shows results even while I am still typing.

How simple should the interface be? Apple simple. As simple as handing an iPad to a two-year old and watching them, within seconds, playing a game or swooshing through images.

Maybe Google fast is like No Child Left Behind – not realistic but a worthy goal. If so, we should hold it out as the ideal and let software providers know that it is the standard against which they will be measured.

I’m tired of dealing with student information systems, special education management software, and learning systems that have interfaces that seem like they were built by drunken apes. We shouldn’t have to wait hours for reports to run. We should be able to expect as much constant innovation and forward-thinking solutions from the software we pay for as from the software we use for free on the web.

Schools should not have to deal with software that’s “not ready for prime time” just because the state department of education endorses it or supplies it.  We should advocate for innovative, cutting-edge tools that truly support the business of schools.

Districts in all states are expected to submit data to the state (for the state to pass on to the National Department of Education) constantly. We are asked to track data on students and faculty and courses and performance that, in reality, we are pulling from many silos at great expense of time and energy. Give us the tools – give us software that pulls it all together for us, software that is Google fast and Apple simple.

References
ACT; http://www.act.org/
ACT is the independent, not-for-profit organization that provides the ACT test

Annual Meeting News; http://www.act.org/activity/winter2011/annualmeeting.html

Be sure to look at Google’s new App Marketplace.

Per Google:

The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google’s universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain’s data.

Once you get to the Marketplace page, click on EDU in the left-hand column. This will take you to a page of all educational apps. Google is saying that this is just the beginning (see Google blog ) and that more are coming.

My district has adopted Google Apps for Education and I am excited to see this addition to the Google offerings. The first app I intend to try is Easy Bib Bibliography.

Google’s Zeitgeist page is a compilation of the most searched queries. Google created a “2010 in review” video based on the queries for the year. The video represents what we were interested in during the year, from Haiti to the oil spill to the Soccer World Cup. As you watch it, count how many of the topics you searched – for me there were lots of intersections.

link to video

“Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched
Based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year, Zeitgeist captures the spirit of 2010.”

Press Release….

On the 11 January 2011 Google is launching the inaugural Google Science Fair. We have partnered with NASA, CERN, National Geographic, Scientific American and the LEGO Group to create a new STEM competition that is more open, accessible and global than ever before. We wanted to reach out to educators prior to launch to let you know “the Google Science Fair is coming” and to extend an invitation to schools and teachers to get involved early in what we hope will be a large global initiative.

The Google Science Fair is a global competition that any student aged 13 – 18 from around the world is eligible to enter. Students can enter as individuals or as teams of up to three. There is no entry fee and registration and submission will happen online. The deadline for submissions will be the 4 April 2011. The Science Fair will culminate in a “once in a life time” celebratory event at Google headquarters in California in July 2011 where finalists will compete for internships, scholarships and prizes in front of a panel of celebrity scientist judges including Nobel Laureates, tech visionaries and household names.

We want to celebrate and champion great young scientific talent and give students from around the world the opportunity to compete for amazing experiences, prizes, scholarships and internships.

We hope you are as excited about this upcoming competition as we are are! To sign up for fun and free resource kits for your classroom or school (Google bookmarks, stickers, posters and more!) and a reminder notification when GSF registration opens, please visit the Google Science Fair at: google.com/sciencefair

How “millennial” are you?
Take the quiz and share your score.
Or, share how you might use this as a conversation starter at a Professional Development event.

Fun Google Map Directions

1. Browse to Google Maps.
2. Select “Get Directions.”
3. Enter Taiwan as start location.
4. Enter China as end location.
5. Click “Get directions” button.
6. Read Step 23.

1. Browse to Google Maps.
2. Select “Get Directions.”
3. Enter USA as start location.
4. Enter Japan as end location.
5. Click “Get directions” button.
6. Pay special attention to the warning about tolls and step 42.

1. Browse to Google Maps.
2. Select “Get Directions.”
3. Enter Japan as start location.
4. Enter China as end location.
5. Click “Get directions” button.
6. Pay special attention to the warning about tolls, ferries, and step 43.

Google has created this really charming picture book, 20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web. The book explains, in a very accessible way, things like browser plug-ins, extensions, IP addresses and DNS. Google provides nice explanations of concepts like cloud computing and web apps.

You will want to share this e-book with your mother AND your students; with your administrators AND your community members. I can see using this as a pre-reading assignment for a professional development day.

Once you read it, please comment here with your suggestion for how educators can use this e-book.

Googleable refers to something that is able to be found by searching on Google, the Internet search engine. Our students may not realize how much of what they post is googleable and very durable. Even after they have deleted the silly pictures of themselves at a party, or the ill-advised rantings about a teacher or friend, the Internet footprint remains, and it is quite difficult to erase entirely.
Ask any college admissions officer, human resources representative, or school superintendent if they “Google” applicants, and you will learn that most do. At a conference I recently attended, Will Richardson said that many also check social networking sites such as FaceBook and MySpace. Then he raised this question – what are educators doing to insure that students “Google well” when they are themselves the applicants (see http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/making-kids-googlable/)?
His question resonated with me. Don’t we want our graduates to be able to proudly direct people to their online presence? I think so. However, I’m afraid that there is an under-representation of positive, impressive material posted by our students. I think it would be a worthwhile project for educators to help students build online portfolios that showcase their quality work and contributions. Students should know that there are those will be judging them by their online presence and that they can use the web to manage that presence to make a positive impression.

We can help make students aware of their digital identity. We should teach students, especially in the upper grades, to Google themselves periodically and review (with an objective eye) what comes up. It’s easy to do – I suggest you Google your own name and review what you find. Does anything come up? Is there anything that would impress (or worry) parents, graduate school admissions officers, school committee members, school administrators? Is what you find a showcase of your finest work and your best qualities? It could be.

I have heard many educators say that students should avoid posting anything on the web that can be related back to them. I think that since the web and Google are now being used by mainstream institutions that “just say no” is simplistic and unhelpful. It is time to have students work the web to their advantage. In a world where quality contributions to collaborative spaces actually increase the likelihood of being hired, the answer is not to post nothing online. Rather, we should be helping students to monitor their online existence and to make decisions and contributions based on the knowledge that others (besides their friends) can and do see what they post.

Related articles:
You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well
Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117856222924394753.html

Why You May Need an Online Persona

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/03/28/why-you-may-need-an-online-persona/