Official Google Australia Blog: education

New Media Literacy Lab equips students with essential skills to identify misinformation and stay safe online

Jumat, 24 Juli 2020

This is a guest blog post from Lesley Podesta, CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation.The Alannah & Madeline Foundation is one of Australia’s most respected children’s charities, and is dedicated to protecting children from violence and its devastating impact. medialiteracylab.org.au
eSmart Digital Licence
Posted by Lesley Podesta, CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation

Tackling (cyber)bullying in a global pandemic

Rabu, 22 Juli 2020

This is a guest blog post from Chloe Eckert, Head of Digital Communications, PROJECT ROCKITreport experiencing (cyber)bullyingAustralian Office of the eSafety CommissionerAustralian opportunity: PROJECT ROCKIT’s School Grant apply for PROJECT ROCKIT's Schools Grant hereBlog post by Chloe Eckert, Head of Digital Communications, PROJECT ROCKIT PROJECT ROCKIT is Australia’s youth-driven movement against bullying, hate and prejudice. Their programs are designed by young people, for young people, with advice developed in collaboration with young people. You can apply for PROJECT ROCKIT’s Schools Grant here.

YouTube Stories: How Aussies are learning through video

Kamis, 21 Mei 2020

Returning to the simpler things in life, Aussies are picking up spades and spatulas. Plant With MeCook With MeSelf Sufficient Me8 Fast Growing Vegetables You Can Grow at Home in a HurryFrom little things, big things grow

One Table Farm

This is just one example of the many learning stories on YouTube where we can see the ripple effects of online connections make their way into the real world. Watch more of our YouTube Learning Stories, or start your own learning journey now with YouTube Learning. Posted by Ashley Chang, Culture & Trends Manager, YouTube APAC

Australian Teachers Leading the Way in STEM Education

Selasa, 12 November 2013

Last week, teachers from all over Australia came together at the first-ever Digital Curriculum Technologies Summit to discuss the best ways to bring computer science and computational thinking into Australian classrooms. Attendees at the summit were lucky enough to learn from some of the Aussie teachers who are leading the way in making computer science fun, approachable, and relevant to their daily lives.

Today we want to recognise five STEM and computer science educators who are making an outstanding contribution to teaching in Australia. Each of them will receive LEGO Education EV3 Robotic kits and a special school visit early next year from a team of Google engineers who will talk to their classrooms about cool careers in technology.

Linda McIver, John Monash Science School

Linda’s class has partnered with Polperro Dolphin Swims to digitise eight years' worth of data about the dolphins in Port Phillip Bay that has just been sitting on a shelf. It's real computational science that will make a difference to the world.

Jenny Gallagher, Milton State School

Jenny uses her engineering background to integrate ‘bee bots’ and other unique educational tools into her lesson plans to help introduce her students to computational thinking before they even realise it.

Graeme Breen, Mountain Creek Secondary School

Graeme has spent his career making sure that the stereotype of technology being a 'boys subject' does not take hold. He encourages students to investigate a range of technologies and devices in an environment that is challenging but fun, and equally available to both genders and all ages.

Karin Pfister, Northern Territories Department of Education

Karin works to help teachers keep up with changes in technology and to integrate them into their curriculum before they become obsolete again.

Rob Torok, Claremont College

Rob has been using LEGO robotics to teach his students since 2001. He has also mentored teams in RoboCup Junior and the FIRST Robotics Competition, and teaches an online robotics class called SmartBots.

Congratulations to these five teachers - we can’t wait to meet the brilliant young minds graduating from your classrooms - maybe when they apply for a job at Google one day?

You can learn more about how you can build computer science and computational thinking into your curriculum, and inspire the next generation of innovators here.

Google and INCUBATE expand student entrepreneurship program across Australia

Kamis, 03 Oktober 2013

From the on-campus coffee shop to the computer science lab, universities are a hotbed for great business ideas and cutting edge technology. University incubators help make that shift from idea to actual startup happen—providing desks for entrepreneurs who are chasing their dreams, as well as mentorship and educational opportunities for talented developers.

We want to help foster the entrepreneurial spirit on campuses and communities across Australia, so we’re teaming up with INCUBATE, the incubator developed by the University of Sydney Union, to help expand their program to other universities throughout Australia, supporting the growing numbers of young entrepreneurs and innovators on campus.

The local tech startup sector has the potential to add over $109 billion to the Australian economy and create more than 500,000 jobs, so there’s never been a better time for our young people to turn their business plans into products. Larry and Sergey were PhD students when they created the very first Google search engine, so we know well that bright young people with big ideas can change the world.

INCUBATE is seeking partner universities, student startups and experienced entrepreneurs to be part of this program, and you can register here to get more information.

Posted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director for Google Australia, and Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community and Outreach Manager at Google

Things you need to know about Google Apps for Education and security

Rabu, 12 Juni 2013

Schools and universities around the world are turning to Google Apps for Education to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. These tools are given to schools and universities for free because we are committed to supporting education and learning.
We’re also committed to protecting the privacy and security of our users — and that includes students. Here are a few important things to know about Google Apps for Education and student accounts:
Google Apps for Education is not ad-supported Advertising is turned off by default in Google Apps for Education. So unless a school administrator chooses to turn ads on, students will not see any of them while using Google Apps services.
Students and schools own their data The data schools and students put into our systems is theirs, and we believe it should stay that way. If an education department, school or university decides to no longer use Google we make it easy for them to take their data away. Most importantly, Google does not sell students’ — or any other users’ — information.
Student accounts are separate to other Google accounts Student account information is never linked with any other consumer accounts they may open. In addition, Google Apps for Education offers schools a number of additional controls and security features. These include a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 customer support, greater storage capacity and the ability for school administrators to turn certain features on or off. As with all our accounts, we keep our users secure by filtering out spam and looking out for viruses and malware.
Google Apps for Education helps thousands of schools and universities around the world to work more efficiently, collaboratively and securely. To learn more about how Google Apps for Education keeps student data secure, read our security policy.
Posted by Suan Yeo, Head of Google Apps for Education, Asia and Pacific

Playing Our Part

Rabu, 07 September 2011

It’s National Child Protection Week - a week to think about how we can play our part to keep kids safe. At Google, we know how important it is to protect and educate young people on using the Internet.

One of the things we do is provide parents and teachers with tools to help them choose what content their children see online, such as Google SafeSearch and Safety Mode on YouTube. You can learn how to use these tools on our Family Safety Centre.

We also work closely with Australian organisations dedicated to educating and protecting young people. Our partner, Bravehearts, is holding White Balloon Day today. This is a day to raise awareness for the victims of child sexual assault. It’s also Bravehearts’ principal fundraising initiative which enables them to educate, empower and protect Aussie kids.

Another of our partners, NAPCAN, the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, has these suggestions for how you can play your part during National Child Protection Week.

Let’s all play our part to keep Aussie kids safe.

Posted by Ishtar Vij, Public Policy and Government Affairs, Google Australia

Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project

Rabu, 02 Februari 2011

This is a cross-post from the Official Google Blog.

One of the things I love about working Google is that you can come up with an idea one day and the next day start getting to work to make it a reality. That's what happened with the Art Project—a new tool we're announcing today which puts more than 1,000 works of art at your fingertips, in extraordinary detail.

It started when a small group of us who were passionate about art got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close.

We're also lucky here to have access to technology like Picasa and App Engine and to have colleagues who love a challenge—like building brand-new technology to enable Street View to go indoors! Thanks to this, and our unique collaboration with museums around the world, we were able to turn our 20% project into something you can try out for yourself today at www.googleartproject.com.

You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Officer and Laughing Girl, Johannes Vermeer (The Frick Collection, New York - U.S.)

Here are a few things you can do:
Dive into brushstroke-level detail: On top of the 1,000+ other images, each of the 17 museums selected one artwork to be photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology. Each of these images contains around 7 billion pixels—that's that’s around 1,000 times more detailed than your average digital camera—and a specially-built “microscope view” uses Picasa to deliver these images at amazingly high resolution. You can zoom in to see Van Gogh’s famous brushwork or watch how previously hard to-see elements of an artwork suddenly become clear—such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger’s “The Merchant Georg Gisze.”

The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum)

Explore inside the museums: the Street View team designed a brand-new vehicle called the “trolley” to take 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries. These were then stitched together and mapped to their location, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. We also created a new clickable annotation feature, so you can jump from being inside a museum one moment to viewing a particular artwork the next. Once inside an image, an info panel lets you read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos. Gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy—with a view on Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”

Create your own collection: With the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends, family or on the web using the integrated goo.gl URL shortener.

We’re incredibly excited about this project—it’s our first step toward making great art more accessible, and we hope to add more museums and works of art in time. So whether you’re a student, an aspiring artist or a casual museum-goer, we hope the Google Art Project gives you a fun and unusual way to interact with art—and hopefully inspires you to visit the real thing.

Posted by Amit Sood, Head of Google Art Project

Announcing Student Voice 2010 results

Rabu, 18 Agustus 2010

Student Voice 2010google.com.au/studentvoice2010

Ignatius Park College, Townsville

Westminister School, South AustraliaPosted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director Google Australia and New Zealand

Eureka! New Google Australia Eureka prize for computer science

Rabu, 17 Maret 2010

Eureka Prize2010 Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial ScholarshipEnter online herePosted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director Google Australia and New Zealand

Coast to coast, more Australian universities Go Google

Kamis, 10 Desember 2009

announcementmore than six million students, staff, and facultyrecent surveygoing Googlebloggedsuccessfully deployed Gmail to over 1.2 million studentsMacquarie UniversityschoolsUniversity of AdelaideUniversity of Southern QueenslandMonash UniversityUniversity of Western Australiaimplemented

project

going GooglePosted by Andrew Mitchell, Google Apps team

Learning in the cloud

Jumat, 06 Maret 2009

Laurie Wales, a Google Certified Teacher from the Catholic Schools Office in Newcastle Australia, is well-versed in the value that online tools can deliver in the classroom. In a presentation at the recent Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Conference, Laurie ran a workshop titled "Connect - Construct - Collaborate". The workshop demonstrated how Google Sites can be used to create an e-portfolio, allowing students to record, archive and share their work with peers, parents, class, school and the world – and showcased how developing projects using Google applications has the potential to bring teachers and students together by making them part of a "global community".

Across the ditch in New Zealand, cloud computing in the classroom is also really hotting up.
Fendalton School in Christchurch, New Zealand uses Google Docs extensively to help staff collaborate on team meeting agendas, track meeting minutes and manage their budgets. The school also uses Google Docs in the classroom to help children as young as seven get organised and receive immediate peer feedback on class presentations through online forms. Blogs are also used extensively across the school, allowing students to discuss key events and helping parents break through the typical "What did you do at school today?" silence. Fendalton School's new web site, FOS Live, is driven through Google Docs and pulls in RSS feeds from class blogs to share learning as it happens in classrooms. This has the potential to reduce traditional barriers between school and the home. In the video below, Fendalton School's Rob Clarke describes some of the uses of Google tools by Fendalton teachers and students. There are even plans to use Google's OpenSocial tools on this school web site.

Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand, has taken this one step further using a range of Google tools to make learning fun. The school's principal, Russell Burt, describes their approach as giving students the space to collaborate with each other and with people worldwide to create and remix content, and to share their work in a manner that was previously only available to the highly technically skilled. To see what the kids at Pt England have been up to, check out the video below.

If you're interested in learning more about using Google Apps in the classroom, you can find a number of online resources, including class plans, here. Or, visit the Google for Educators Discussion Group to engage with other educators and share information about Google in education.

Posted by Andrew Mitchell, Google Apps Team

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