Category Archives: Google for Education Blog

The official source for information about Google’s education-related efforts

Introducing AIY Vision Kit: Make devices that see

Earlier this year, we kicked off AIY Projects to help makers experiment with and learn about artificial intelligence. Our first release, AIY Voice Kit, was a huge hit! People built many amazing projects, showing what was possible with voice recognition in maker projects.

Today, we’re excited to announce our latest AIY Project, the Vision Kit. It’s our first project that features on-device neural network acceleration, providing powerful computer vision without a cloud connection.

vision-kit-assembly — AIY Vision Kit's do-it-yourself assembly

What’s in the AIY Vision Kit?

Like AIY Voice Kit (released in May), Vision Kit is a do-it-yourself build. You’ll need to add a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a Raspberry Pi Camera, an SD card and a power supply, which must be purchased separately.

The kit includes a cardboard outer shell, the VisionBonnet circuit board, an RGB arcade-style button, a piezo speaker, a macro/wide lens kit, a tripod mounting nut and other connecting components.

vision-kit-exploded — AIY Vision Kit components

The main component of AIY Vision Kit is the VisionBonnet board for Raspberry Pi. The bonnet features the Intel® Movidius™ MA2450, a low-power vision processing unit capable of running neural network models on-device.

vision-kit-bonnet — AIY Vision Kit's VisionBonnet accessory for Raspberry Pi

The provided software includes three TensorFlow-based neural network models for different vision applications. One based on MobileNets can recognize a thousand common objects, a second can recognize faces and their expressions and the third is a person, cat and dog detector. We've also included a tool to compile models for Vision Kit, so you can train and retrain models with TensorFlow on your workstation or any cloud service.

We also provide a Python API that gives you the ability to change the RGB button colors, adjust the piezo element sounds and access the four GPIO pins.

With all of these features, you can explore many creative builds that use computer vision. For example, you can:

Identify all kinds of plant and animal species
See when your dog is at the back door
See when your car left the driveway
See that your guests are delighted by your holiday decorations
See when your little brother comes into your room (sound the alarm!)

Where can you get it?

AIY Vision Kit will be available in stores in early December. Pre-order your kit today through Micro Center.

** Please note that full assembly requires Raspberry Pi Zero W, Raspberry Pi Camera and a micro SD card, which must be purchased separately.

We're listening

Please let us know how we can improve on future kits and show us what you’re building by using the #AIYProjects hashtag on social media.

We’re excited to see what you build!

Source: Education

Tackling the “homework gap” with the National AfterSchool Association

Editor’s note: We’re providing a $500,000 grant to support the National AfterSchool Association (NAA) as a part of our ongoing commitment to help underserved communities deliver on the promise of educational technology. In this post, Gina Warner, president and CEO of the National AfterSchool Association, describes how we’re helping students access the technology they need to learn and grow beyond classroom walls.

Learning doesn’t stop after the school bell rings. Students actually spend 80 percent of their time outside of a classroom, where they develop essential skills by trying out new hobbies, forming important relationships and completing their schoolwork. But there’s a big issue here: While a majority of teachers increasingly assign homework that requires the internet, millions of students—primarily those from low-income and rural communities—don’t have access at home. This is known as “the homework gap” and it’s causing too many students to fall behind.

We believe that afterschool programs can play a big role in closing this gap, but they often need more support and guidance in order to do so. That’s why we’re so thrilled that Google is stepping up to provide this grant to support the 4 million students our members serve.

The National AfterSchool Association works with the Connecticut AfterSchool Network to support organizations like DOMUS Kids in Stamford, CT, that help young people learn and challenge themselves socially, emotionally, and academically.

For 30 years, the National AfterSchool Association (NAA) has supported more than 520,000 people who are there for students during out-of-school hours: the professionals who keep kids engaged, help them do their homework, and make sure they're safe and supported. Through a new $500,000 grant from Google, we’ll help to make sure that afterschool professionals and their students have access to the technology they need. We're proud to build on the work of Google's Dynamic Learning Project and Grow with Google to provide educators—including those outside of traditional classroom settings—with the skills, trainings and resources they need to help tackle the homework gap.

With Google’s support, we’ve started by commissioning a research review to learn more about how afterschool programs can help close the homework gap. Our initial report, “Empowering Afterschool Professionals for Digital Learning,” found that afterschool programs have the capacity to offer deeper digital learning opportunities. But to fully help young people access and best use technology, our afterschool professionals need guidance, skills and knowledge. Over the upcoming months, with volunteer support from Googlers, we’ll create a toolkit and hands-on trainings for afterschool professionals looking to provide students with access to technology outside of classroom hours. As these are available, these resources will be shared on our NAA site and will be made freely available to the public.

With better support from afterschool professionals, we can't wait to see how our students will develop into digital citizens ready to tackle whatever the future brings.

Source: Education

A look inside 2017 Europe Code Week

Last month, we announced our support of Europe Code Week 2017, an initiative from the European Commission to encourage programming by showing educators, families and young people how to bring ideas to life with code, demystifying these skills and bringing motivated people together to learn. We provided sponsorships to 60 organizations in 33 countries that take creative, interactive and inspiring approaches to get students excited about computer science. And we’re excited that in total, 56,000 students had the chance to gain more exposure to CS as part of these efforts. Here’s a look at a few of the organizations we supported, and the events they held this month:

We’re delighted to have helped these 56,000 students gain more coding experiences in just two weeks, and to collaborate with the European Commission on this successful initiative. See Code Week’s events page to find activities still taking place, and find resources for France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. For all other countries please visit edu.google.com/cs.

Source: Education

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month

Shekoli (hello)! My Oneida name is Yakohahi, my English name is Olivia, and I am a proud member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, one of the six tribal nations that make up the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. In Indigenous communities, we often introduce ourselves in this manner, in both English and our traditional tribal languages, to share our connection to people or places. It’s a way to honor, celebrate, and translate our cultures into our daily lives. As a Googler, I’ve been fortunate to find another community to add to my introduction, as a member of the Google American Indian Network, GAIN.

This Native American Heritage Month, I’m excited to share some of our efforts to bring diverse perspectives to our products, so that technology can serve our Native communities.

This month, we worked with the Indian Community School of Milwaukee to show how easy it is to start a computer science program, take learning beyond the walls of the classroom using Expeditions, and share some online safety tips with students.

Outside the classroom, we’re extending our knowledge panel functionality to surface information about tribes in relevant search results. We also put together a set of YouTube playlists with user-based content on Native foods and endangered languages, and in Google Earth’s storytelling platform Voyager, we shared a Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, celebrating tribal government success.

Earlier this year, Google Doodles honored Richard Oakes (Mohawk) for his contributions in social justice and education, as well as Susan LaFlesche Picotte (Omaha) for her influence on public health and social reform. New updates to Google Earth and Maps allow you to see and search for Indigenous lands in North and South America. We also continue to collaborate with tribal language communities to create web-based virtual keyboards for their languages. With Google Input Tools, people can now text, email, and search in mobile apps, or create content for websites or blogs in their Native language, helping tribes to preserve their languages online.

As Native American Heritage Month wraps up, we will continue to engage with native communities and provide tools to help everyone tell their stories.

Yaw^ko (thank you)!

Source: Education

Investing £1 million in training for computing teachers in the U.K.

Advancing our students’ understanding of the principles and practices of computing is critical to developing a competitive workforce for the 21st century.

In every field, businesses of all sizes are looking to hire people who understand computing, so we need more students to leave school confident in skills like coding, computational thinking, machine learning and cybersecurity.

The U.K. has already led the way in preparing for this future by making computer science education a part of the school curriculum in 2014. But we know there is more to do to ensure young people in every community have access to world-class computer science education.

A recent report from the Royal Society found that despite the good progress in recent years, only 11 percent of Key Stage 4 pupils take GCSE computer science. The majority of teachers are teaching an unfamiliar school subject without adequate support. These teachers are eager to offer computer science to their students but they need access to subject area training to build their confidence.

The U.K. government’s announcement that they’re investing £100 million for an additional 8,000 computer science teachers supported by a new National Centre for Computing is an encouraging step forward. It builds on the progress that’s been made since computing was added to the curriculum in 2014 by helping to ensure teachers have the specialist training and support they need to educate the next generation of British computer scientists.

We want to continue to play our part too.

Today we're announcing £1 million in grants to support training for secondary school computing teachers in the U.K.

The Google.org grant will allow the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the British Computer Society and the National STEM Learning Centre to deliver free computer science and pedagogy training for thousands of key stage 3 and key stage 4 teachers in England over three years, with a specific focus on disadvantaged areas.

A Raspberry Pi and Google teacher training workshop in Leeds, UK — A Raspberry Pi and Google teacher training workshop in Leeds, U.K.

Through this effort, they will make make online courses and professional development resources available to teachers anywhere, anytime, for free, and deliver free in-person workshops for teachers across the country.

Googlers care deeply about helping to develop our future computer scientists, and many of them will give their time and skills to this program. A team of Google engineers and learning and development specialists will volunteer with Raspberry Pi to ensure that all teachers are able to access the online resources and courses.

This grant is part of Google’s long-standing commitment to computer science education. Through Google.org, we’ve given nearly $40 million to organizations around the globe ensuring that traditionally underrepresented students have access to opportunities to explore computer science.

In the U.K., we also support teacher recruitment and professional development by teaming up with organizations like Teach First and University of Wolverhampton, and we focus on inspiring more children, especially girls and those from disadvantaged areas, to take up computing through Code Club UK after-school clubs.

CS education and computational thinking skills are key to the future, and we’re committed to supporting Raspberry Pi—and other organizations like them—to ensure teachers and young people have the skills they’ll need to succeed.

Source: Education

How Sweden’s Oxievång School helps teachers navigate the journey to the “learning island”

Editor’s note: Google has just completed its first-ever Google for Education Study Tour, bringing nearly 100 educators from 12 countries around Europe to Lund, Sweden, to share ideas on innovating within their systems and creating an environment that embraces innovation.. One of the highlights of the two-day event was a visit to Oxievång School in Malmö, where principal Jenny Nyberg has led their adoption of technology in the classroom. Below, Jenny explains how to support teachers during a period of technology adoption.

When we’re introducing new technology for our classrooms, I tell my teachers to imagine the ultimate goal as an island we all have to swim toward. Some of us are very fast swimmers, and we’ll figure out how to get to the island quickly, and even get around any sharks. Some of us are slow swimmers, and may be hesitant to jump in, but the strong swimmers will show us the way (and how to get around the sharks). Eventually, we all have to jump into the water.

Bringing tech-based personalized learning into the classrooms at Oxievång School was our “island” and we’ve all completed the journey, which was particularly important given that our school, like the city of Malmö itself, is a mix of different people with varying needs. We have immigrant students as well as native Swedes; 40 percent of our students speak Swedish as their second language. But all students can become strong learners when teachers discover what motivates and excites them. When we adopted G Suite for education, our “fast-swimmer” teachers showed their colleagues how they could now customize learning for each and every student.

Oxievång School_Jenny.png — Jenny Nyberg during school visit

As school leaders, my vice principals and I served as role models for using G Suite— not just for teaching, but for making our jobs easier too. We showed teachers how to use Google Sites to store information we needed every day, like staff policies and forms. We walked teachers through the Google Docs tools that allow them to comment on student work immediately rather than waiting to receive homework from students, and giving feedback much later. When teachers saw this in action, they understood how adopting G Suite was going to make a big difference for their teaching effectiveness and their productivity.

If you want teachers to become enthusiastic about using new technology, they need to be confident in their use of the new technology. For this, you have to give them support. So we hired a digital learning educator who works exclusively with teachers to help them build up their technology skills. Every teacher receives a personalized development plan with a list of resources for training.

Our students have become more engaged in their coursework as teachers have become better at using Google technology to personalize learning. If students are curious about a subject, they can use their Chromebooks and G Suite tools to further explore the topic on their own. They also interact with teachers more often, even using Hangouts to meet with teachers outside of the classroom. As teachers become more confident, their enthusiasm spreads to the students.

Oxievång School_students.png — One of the stations included students demonstrating robots they programmed with their Chromebooks

Once we give teachers basic training, we keep supporting them so that the transformation spreads throughout the school. When they need extra help with using G Suite, teachers know where to find it: they can schedule a meeting with the digital learning educator. We have team leaders across grades and subjects who help teachers’ follow their development plans. Once a month, we all meet at school sessions called “skrytbyt,” which roughly translates as “boost exchange.” In these sessions teachers trade stories about lessons that went well and ask for advice about how to improve lessons they find challenging. Sharing knowledge is a great way to build confidence.

As leaders in education, we have to be honest with teachers and acknowledge that change isn’t easy, but assure them that we’re here for them. Teachers worry that students know more about technology than they do—students are the digital natives, while teachers are the digital immigrants. We constantly remind teachers that they can find inspiration in each other and in their students’ knowledge, so that we all make it to the island together.

Source: Education

Quill.org: better writing with machine learning

Editor’s note: TensorFlow, our open source machine learning library, is just that—open to anyone. Companies, nonprofits, researchers and developers have used TensorFlow in some pretty cool ways, and we’re sharing those stories here on Keyword. Here’s one of them.

Quill.org was founded by a group of educators and technologists to help students become better writers and critical thinkers. Before beginning development, they researched hundreds of studies on writing education and found a common theme—students had a hard time grasping the difference between a run-on sentence and a fragment. So the Quill team developed a tool to help students identify the different parts of a sentence, with a focus on real-time feedback.

Using the Quill tool, students complete a variety of exercises, including joining sentences, writing complex sentences, and explaining their use and understanding of grammar. The tool relies on a huge depository of sentence fragments, which Quill finds, recognizes and compiles using TensorFlow, Google's open source machine learning library. TensorFlow technology is the backbone of the tool and can accurately detect if a student’s answers are correct. After completing the exercises, each student gets a customized explanation of incorrect responses, and the tool learns from each answer to create an individualized testing plan focused on areas of difficulty. Here's an example of how it works:

More than 200,000 students—62 percent from low-income schools—have used Quill. They’ve collectively answered 20 million exercises, and Quill’s quick, personalized writing instruction has helped them master writing standards across the Common Core curriculum.

Teachers have also benefitted from introducing Quill in their classrooms. Each teacher has access to a customized portal, allowing them to see an individual student’s progress. Plus, by using machine learning, teachers have been spared hundreds of hours of manual grading. Laura, a teacher at Caswell Elementary School in California said, "Quill has been a wonderful tool for my third graders, many of whom are second language learners. We especially love the immediate feedback provided after each practice; it has definitely made us pay closer attention to detail.”

Quill’s most recent update is a “multiplayer” feature, allowing students to interact with each other in the tool. They can see their peers’ responses, which fosters spirited classroom discussions and collaboration, and helps students learn from each other.

While students aren’t using quills (or even pens!) anymore, strong writing skills are as important as ever. And with the help of machine learning, Quill makes it fun and engaging to develop those skills.

Source: Education

Portraits of veteran scholars across America

As Veterans Day approaches, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the military and veterans community. From local artists to community leaders to technology innovators, veterans contribute not only to our workplace, but to our neighborhoods and culture. This dedication to serving the community is what inspired me to enlist in the California Army National Guard four years ago. I was already working at Google, but was inspired by some of the Googlers I met who had served in the military. It's one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I’m one of the leaders of the Google Veterans Network, a volunteer employee resource group that strives to make Google one of the best workplaces for veterans and service members. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Google Veterans Network and since 2014, employees have volunteered over 7,300 hours of service with veteran organizations.

As part of our ongoing commitment to veterans, Google works closely with the Student Veterans of America to support the Google SVA scholarship and invites SVA scholars to the company’s annual student veterans summit. This SVA scholarship helps encourage veterans on their path to attaining a computer science or IT-related degree; applications for 2018 are still open.

I’m continuously humbled by the contributions of our service members and their willingness to share their experiences. So as part of the multiple ways we’re recognizing veterans this week, we’re taking the moment to highlight incredible Google SVA scholars that are strengthening their communities and themselves.

Gabriel De La Cruz, 2014 recipient

In 2005, Gabriel De La Cruz, a newly arrived immigrant from the Philippines, decided to join the Navy. As a Hospital Corpsman with the Marines, Gabriel was deployed on three separate combat missions to Iraq and Afghanistan, which instilled in him a deep sense of mission and passion for helping others.

Back in the Philippines, he’d gone to school for IT, and upon leaving the military, he decided to resume his studies in that area. He searched on Google for “scholarships for veterans,” and learned about the Google SVA scholarship. He says it changed the way he saw his future in pursuing a degree for computer science.

“It was a humbling opportunity, and allowed me to understand that there’s a potential of changing people’s lives,” he says.

Today, Gabriel is a graduate researcher, pursuing a Ph.D. at Washington State University. His goal is to build more intelligent robots that accomplish tasks ranging from helping older generations who have cognitive disorders to reducing casualties on the frontlines. He says his time in the Navy and his interest in robotics are coming full circle.

“I’m most satisfied when I’m able to help the people around me,” he says.

Elizabeth Jones, 2016 recipient

When Elizabeth Jones joined the Marines in 2005, she was confident she’d be in for life. But soon after she enlisted she began experiencing seizures, and left the corps in 2007.

Her transition back to civilian life was jarring. She felt she’d lost the camaraderie of her fellow Marines, and struggled to find a new purpose in life. Ultimately, Elizabeth decided to go back to school at the University of West Florida. There she pursued a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering after a trusted professor told her she’d be “wasting her intelligence” if she didn’t. She applied for the Google SVA scholarship at the urging of a fellow student veteran, and found the experience incredibly rewarding.

“It helped me push through and not give up when it was really hard,” she says. “And Google’s done a lot more for me than just giving me a scholarship. I feel like it really showed me that there are people like me doing great things with their degrees.”

Elizabeth is putting her electrical engineering degree to work as a systems engineer for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, in Keyport, WA. There, she works on anti-submarine warfare systems to protect American soldiers at sea.

“I think that people take their place in life for granted, and I don’t feel that way,” Elizabeth says. “I feel very grateful that this is where I’m at in life, and it was made easier than it could have been with the Google SVA Scholarship.”

James Matthew Landis, 2015 recipient

Army Veteran James Matthew (Matt) Landis always knew he’d join the military. His grandfathers and uncles had all served, and he decided to enlist after college. During his 10 years in the Army as an Apache Longbow helicopter pilot, Matt sustained several head injuries that left him disabled. Upon leaving active duty in 2009, he decided to go back to college, first for art, and later for computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. There, he was awarded the Google SVA scholarship for his degree, which had a huge impact on his career.

“It was one of the first real affirmations that I was actually talented and worth investing in,” he says. He also met a community of veterans working in tech who he could relate to. “People didn’t just say, ‘Thank you for your service.’ All they cared about was ‘can you code?’ That was so refreshing,” he says.

Today, Matt is an embedded systems engineer for the University of Pittsburgh where he works on software for robotics technology with healthcare applications, including prosthetics and adaptive sports technology.

Matt is also committed to his work at No One Left Behind, an organization dedicated to saving the lives of America’s Wartime Allies—interpreters and others that assisted U.S. troops—and their families. Already they’ve brought eight families from Iraq and Afghanistan who served as interpreters and helped them acclimate to their new lives. In addition, he’s running programs to bring STEM education to these same communities. He says, “When I start to imagine what it’ll be like when these families have their children and children's children in 50 years … I’m incredibly proud.“

Source: Education

Connecting students across space and time with Google Cloud

Editor’s note: This week the Google team is in Philadelphia for the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2017, an important gathering of higher education technology leaders. If you’re at the event, visit us at booth #1100 to see the latest demos of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), G Suite, devices like Jamboard and virtual reality and augmented reality tools. If you want to be a part of the action from home follow at #EDU17 and our @GoogleForEdu account. If you want to connect with our team but cannot make it to the event contact us.

Yesterday we shared some of the inspiring ways we’ve seen researchers, faculty and students in higher education work with GCP to power their big ideas. But it’s not just researchers that can benefit from the cloud. From virtual reality tools like Jump & Tilt Brush to G Suite for Education to GCP, Google tools are helping educators create new, strong connections amongst students, with faculty, and with new parts of the curriculum.

Brown University connects students with the past with virtual reality

The Gaspee Affair is an important, but largely forgotten moment in U.S. history. And with its “cannon fire and gunshots and boat chases,” it was also a perfect candidate for reconstruction in virtual reality (VR), says Adam Blumenthal, Virtual Reality Artist-in-Residence and Professor of the Practice at Brown University.

With a team of students and a Jump camera from Google, Blumenthal drafted scripts, designed sets and built a detailed virtual world so that students could interact with the past. “One of the things I love about VR is its ability to put people in places that are otherwise impossible, and in this case that’s stepping back in time in these very authentic recreations,” he says. During production the team has used Tilt Brush, Google’s 3D painting tool, to quickly produce storyboards of 3D scenes as well as to create what Blumenthal calls “virtual reality dioramas” that combine Tilt Brush paint with 2D and 3D assets. Today the prototype of their Gaspee Affair project functions like a virtual museum: students can view the spaces from any angle and interact with its objects. Click here to read the full Brown case study.

We want to help more institutions create their own VR experiences for learning. Google’s Daydream team is excited to launch a pilot program to give higher ed institutions the skills and tools to bring these ideas to life. You can get notified about the upcoming 360 video training course, express interest in the Daydream higher education pilot program or learn more about Google’s AR and VR tools.

educause-2-1-1 — Brown University students and faculty create the historic Gaspee Affair in 3D using a Jump camera from Google.

Central Wyoming connects its students and faculty across large distances with G Suite for Education

At Central Wyoming College (CWC), students and staff previously had to be on campus in order to access email and documents—this was especially challenging in a rural region where people commute long distances. Now that CWC uses cloud-based tools through G Suite for Education, it helps them respond to the unique challenges of their campus community.

The school’s 2,000 students are spread across four campuses, and in the case of its Outdoor Education program, remote wilderness. “It’s extremely hard for our students to get together in person,” says CIO John Wood. Now professors and staff can choose to work live or remotely as needed, cutting down on long commutes to CWC campuses. “Their collaboration can now take place in other ways,” Wood says. “Hangouts are becoming popular, since students can use them to meet face-to-face when they’re not on campus.” Read the Central Wyoming case study and sign up for G Site for Education.

Manhattan College powers critical campus IT systems with GCP

Manhattan College began using Google Cloud in 2008, and “in most cases, it has been the best answer,” says Manhattan College Chief Information Officer Jake Holmquist. First came the transition to Gmail; that “was the foot in the door that we in IT needed to show the rest of campus that it was okay to operate in the cloud,” says Holmquist.

Then last July, building on the trust and familiarity they had gained using Google tools, Manhattan College moved to implement “Banner 9,” an upgrade to their prior system, on top of GCP. In the past “a typical deployment in our datacenter meant a six-figure hardware purchase that we were not guaranteed to be delivered and provisioned in time for ample testing,” Holmquist said. “Instead, we took the unprecedented approach of deploying these new Banner 9 components in GCP’s Compute Engine. We were able to quickly and easily spin up various components during the installation and upgrade testing.”

They were able to deploy a production environment with “excellent performance and a level of high-availability that we could not have achieved on campus.” This has freed Holmquist and his team up for important work. “Instead of maintaining servers, replacing failed components, and applying patches, we are now focusing on making our applications run more efficiently which results in a more measurable benefit to our end-users.” Read the Manhattan College case study or express your interest in Google Cloud Platform.

Source: Education

For #MyFutureMe finalists, a geofilter shows dreams for the future

A better and brighter future. A world that accepts people for who they are. Voicing opinions for those who may not be able to.

These are just a few elements of a future envisioned by five special teenage girls. Along with Snap Inc., we created the #MyFutureMe contest to challenge teens to design a geofilter based on the future they imagine for themselves. More than 22,000 teens entered the contest, and five finalists—chosen by Snap—are attending TEDWomen in New Orleans this week, where they’ll hear from entrepreneurs, innovators, artists and activists. They’ll receive mentoring sessions from three Google engineers, and each girl will work with the Snap Design team to create her own, unique Snapchat Lens.

These finalists were chosen from 22,000 teens who entered the contest. Here are the geofilters they created, as well as their vision for the future they not only imagine, but are determined to create.

Anna Nesbitt
Pittsburgh, PA

My dream is to bring computer science and robotics to third world countries. I'm taking coding classes right now and I am a part of a FIRST Robotics Team (Girls of Steel 3504) to learn as much as I can about coding and robotics so I can apply it to my aspirations. I started and ran a robotics team at my elementary school last year in 8th grade for a group of third graders. I taught them basic engineering and CS concepts. I hope to expand my program to two more teams this year, focusing on inspiring girls!

Zoe Lynch
South Orange, NJ

7.5 billion people make up the world’s population; each with their own unique set of skills and talents. My vision for the future is one where innovation is accessible to all. As a multiracial girl, I believe it’s important for everyone to be included. Whether it's tutoring math, volunteering, creating problem-solving applications, or doing something as simple as spreading positivity; I am doing as much as I can to make my vision for the future a reality. Together the possibilities are endless. 7.5 billion people—that’ s a lot of brainpower!

Aishwarya Rane
Diamond Bar, CA

My vision for the future is to have greater gender, racial, and social equality and increase representation for minorities. I hope to develop interpersonal skills as well as public speaking skills. I believe these skills will allow me to voice my opinions for those who may not be able to. I am a part of Girl Up, a campaign by the UN to empower girls around the world, and Society of Women Engineers at my high school. I actively work to bring awareness about contemporary issues (i.e., human trafficking) and increase female representation in STEM.

Maria Wangamez
San Francisco, CA

An educated world. A world that accepts people for who they are. A world without barriers to education, whether those be financial, geographical, or social. I want to develop a comprehensive education system that can be instituted across the globe; one that is not standardized, but can be changed and suited to varying levels of different types of intelligence (mathematical, scientific, linguistic, artistic, athletic...). To accomplish this, I will start a company, and gather creative, forward-thinking people around me; ones with unique and fantastic skills in coding, educating, animating, advertising and calculating. Together, we will educate the world.

Sasha Williams
Danville, CA

The future I envision is a better and brighter one. A future where everyone is equal, and confident in who they are, and not judged or mistreated for that. I am currently trying to make this possible through my skill set around gaming and coding. I advocate for young African American girls and inspire them to become creators of their own future, through technology. I have also made a social justice video game about Black History, that won me a trip to the White House! My future me wants to make a difference. I'm kind of a big deal.

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Category Archives: Google for Education Blog

Introducing AIY Vision Kit: Make devices that see

What’s in the AIY Vision Kit?

Where can you get it?

We're listening

Source: Education

Tackling the “homework gap” with the National AfterSchool Association

Source: Education

A look inside 2017 Europe Code Week

Source: Education

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month

Source: Education

Investing £1 million in training for computing teachers in the U.K.

Source: Education

How Sweden’s Oxievång School helps teachers navigate the journey to the “learning island”

Source: Education

Quill.org: better writing with machine learning

Source: Education

Portraits of veteran scholars across America

Source: Education

Connecting students across space and time with Google Cloud

Brown University connects students with the past with virtual reality

Central Wyoming connects its students and faculty across large distances with G Suite for Education

Manhattan College powers critical campus IT systems with GCP

Source: Education

For #MyFutureMe finalists, a geofilter shows dreams for the future

Source: Education

What’s in the AIY Vision Kit?

Where can you get it?

We're listening

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Source: Education

Brown University connects students with the past with virtual reality

Central Wyoming connects its students and faculty across large distances with G Suite for Education

Taking education higher with Google Cloud Platform

Manhattan College powers critical campus IT systems with GCP

Source: Education

Source: Education