In 2022, Google Fiber provided a $30,000 grant to the West Des Moines Community Schools Foundation to advance their initiative to expand STEM programming in all West Des Moines Community Schools (WDMCS) elementary schools. This support was directed to Western Hills Elementary School, where principal Jenna Presley has launched a new STEAM lab this fall. STEAM programming taps into children's natural curiosity and creativity, and Western Hills staff and teachers have been evaluating and planning the best ways to engage the entire student body to explore the world through this new resource.

For our dedicated team at Western Hills Elementary School, getting back to school is our favorite time of the year. Each of our students, from pre-K through sixth grade, comes from a different background and learns in different ways, so we’re constantly looking for opportunities to better reach students, enhance their learning experience and set them up for success both inside and outside the classroom. 

This year, we are proud to offer a brand new, interactive STEAM lab to our students with resources that span across ages and grades. STEAM incorporates all the great attributes of STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – while incorporating arts into the mix, including visual, language and physical arts. Many students have greater aptitude and affinity for either arts and humanities or mathematics and science, and STEAM brings these together while tapping into students’ natural curiosity and creativity.

Several WDMCS elementary schools offer some STEM/STEAM programming to their students, so when we were presented with this opportunity by Google Fiber, we knew our students would greatly benefit from these types of learning resources.

Our staff has been incredibly intentional with the grant from Google Fiber. We not only needed a physical space in the school, but also a way to create access to the resources and activities so teachers could check them out from the lab and bring them into their classrooms. Much more than a play space, we wanted to create an interactive and exploratory space that fosters hands-on learning, hones underlying strengths and student learning targets, and finds ways to connect these resources within existing lesson plans. 

We have worked for months to make this program and lab as accessible as possible. After going through a professional development and training seminar this summer, each of our teachers worked with staff to evaluate lesson plans for opportunities to incorporate our new STEAM resources. A few of the tools students get to experience and learn with this year include:

• BeeBots programmable robots introduce the concept of coding and emphasize measurement and multiplication skills

• Spirobots introduce the practical application of robotics to students 

• Merge Cubes interactive digital canvas enhance learning potential and opportunities 

These tools are just a few of the many our staff will utilize to explore and leverage new learning methods and opportunities with our students. At Western Hills Elementary, we are big proponents of voice and choice, and we strive to offer a variety of resources for both our staff and students that foster engagement, learning and excitement while here at school. 

Thanks to a generous donation from Google Fiber, our team is proud to bring these new exciting STEAM resources and lab to our staff and students. This is just the beginning. We know this lab will grow and shift as the tools and resources become more ingrained in our lesson plans and offerings, and we are excited to create new ways to bring out the genius in all of our students. 

Posted by: Jenna Pressley, Principal, Western Hills Elementary School 

GFiber trabaja con organizaciones de todo el país para conectar a más personas con los beneficios de Internet de calidad. En Austin, Latinitas ayuda a las mujeres jóvenes a desarrollar las habilidades necesarias para vivir en un mundo digital. La directora de comunicaciones, Salwa Yordi, comparte su historia.

Nuestra misión en Latinitas es empoderar a todas las niñas para que innoven a través de los medios de comunicación y la tecnología. Brindamos programación en persona y virtual para que las estudiantes se expresen, desarrollen habilidades tecnológicas, aprendan sobre su cultura y descubran su voz única. Cada verano la Latinitas organiza “Club Latinitas” para niños de ocho a 18 años para facilitar clases sobre creatividad digital y codificación. Sin duda, se necesita Internet confiable de alta velocidad para apoyar adecuadamente a estas niñas y sus proyectos innovadores.

Como Conexión Comunitaria de Google Fiber, Latinitas ha confiado en nuestro servicio de Google Fiber para brindar actividades enriquecedoras y recursos educativos que se han integrado perfectamente en las actividades de nuestro campamento, incluyendo talleres de transmisión en vivo con oradores invitados de alrededor de todo el país.

Según la Liga Nacional de Ciudades, solo el 65% de las personas Hispanas que viven en los Estados Unidos tienen acceso a una forma de conexión de banda ancha en comparación con las personas Blancas (80%) y Negras (71%). En Texas, más del 15% de los hogares carecen de banda ancha en cinco condados del centro de Texas (Bastrop, Fayette, Lee, Caldwell y Mason), según estimaciones de la Oficina del Censo de EE. UU. de 2017 a 2021. Además de la falta de acceso, también hay una falta de habilidades digitales dentro de la comunidad Latina. Para abordar esta necesidad, Google Fiber ha sido un socio constante en la financiación de las clases digitales para padres de Latinitas durante los últimos años.

Por primera vez, cada campista en Latinitas tiene la capacidad de interactuar con profesionales de la industria en sesiones virtuales en tiempo real, participar en talleres dinámicos y colaborar en proyectos multimedia sin interrupciones debido a la conectividad. Además, la confiabilidad de Internet también ha facilitado la investigación en línea, permitiendo a las niñas a profundizarse en áreas de interés y ultimamente desarrollar su confianza.

Latinitas se compromete a fomentar una generación de líderes expertos en tecnología. Este es un compromiso a largo plazo. Conectar a nuestra comunidad garantiza que la misión y la visión de nuestra organización permanezcan accesibles para todos, y estamos agradecidas por socios como Google Fiber que están ayudando a nuestras futuras generaciones a prosperar.

Publicado por Salwa Yordi, Directora de Comunicaciones de Latinitas

GFiber works with organizations across the country to connect more people to the benefits of quality internet. In Austin, Latinitas helps young women develop the necessary skills for living in a digital world. Communications Director Salwa Yordi shares their story.

Our mission at Latinitas is to empower all girls to innovate through media and technology. We provide in-person and virtual programming for students to express themselves, develop tech skills, learn about their culture, and discover their unique voice. Every summer the organization hosts “Club Latinitas” for kids ages eight to 18 to facilitate classes on digital creativity and coding. Without question, reliable high-speed internet is necessary in order to adequately support these children and their innovative projects.

As a Google Fiber Community Connection, Latinitas has relied on our Google Fiber service to provide enriching activities and educational resources that have been seamlessly integrated into our camp activities, including live streaming workshops with guest speakers from around the country. 

According to the National League of Cities, only 65% of Hispanic individuals living in the United States have access to a form of broadband connection compared to white (80%) and Black (71%) individuals. In Texas, more than 15% of households lacked broadband in five Central Texas counties (Bastrop, Fayette, Lee, Caldwell and Mason), according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates from 2017 to 2021. In addition to the lack of access, there’s also a lack of digital skills within the Latino community. To address this need Google Fiber has been an ongoing partner in funding Latinitas Digital Parents classes for the past few years. 

For the first time, every camper at Latinitas has the ability to interact with industry professionals in real-time virtual sessions, participate in dynamic workshops and collaborate on multimedia projects without disruption due to connectivity. Additionally, the internet's reliability has also facilitated smooth online research, empowering kids to delve deeper into areas of interest and ultimately building up their confidence. 

Latinitas is committed to fostering a generation of tech-savvy leaders. This is a long-term commitment. Connecting our community ensures the mission and vision of our organization remains accessible to all, and we are thankful for partners like Google Fiber who are helping our future generations thrive.

Posted by Salwa Yordi, Communications Director at Latinitas     

The National WWI Museum and Memorial has been a Google Fiber Community Connection since 2014. Recently, they asked if we could upgrade them to our new 5 Gig service to help support their activities during a big onsite event. . .and they decided they liked it so much that they wanted to keep it as a paying customer! In advance of Memorial Day, we’re happy to share a guest post from their Vice President of Facilities, Operations Management and Technology, Chris Wyche, on how they are putting that speed to use to help further their mission of remembrance and education. 

The Liberty Memorial Tower is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Kansas City skyline. In 1918, weeks after the Armistice ended fighting on the Western Front, Kansas City leaders coalesced around the need to build a lasting monument for those who served in The Great War. So, in 1919 the Liberty Memorial Association was founded. In just 10 days, $2.5 million was raised – the equivalent of $40 million today – and the National WWI Museum and Memorial was born. 

Over the last several decades the Museum and Memorial has experienced exponential growth in service to our mission: to remember, interpret and understand The Great War (known today as World War I) and its enduring impact on the global community. 

• 1998: Kansas Citians voiced their support for the Liberty Memorial Tower and their interest in expanding the site by building a museum beneath the Tower.

• 2004: The Museum and Memorial was designated by Congress as the nation’s official World War I Museum.

• 2006: In September, the site was designated a National Historic Landmark and the National WWI Museum and Memorial opened to international acclaim.

Although the Museum and Memorial’s mission is rooted in reverence for the past, part of my job is to ensure we’re consistently looking to the future, finding avenues to better serve our visitors and the community. 

As such, when Google Fiber brought high-speed internet service to Kansas City more than 10 years ago, we jumped at the opportunity to work with this innovative company. Now, we’ve been a Google Fiber Community Connection for almost a decade. Google Fiber’s service allows us to bring best-in-class, interactive digital experiences to each of our visitors each year; it also ensures we’re prepared when significant milestones occur. 

In April we experienced one of those milestones, the 2023 NFL Draft, in which the Museum and Memorial played an integral role. With hundreds of thousands of fans descending on and around our grounds, we knew both internet access and speed were of critical importance. Therefore, we reached out to our longstanding internet service provider, Google Fiber, to identify solutions to help prepare us for the influx of people and technology needs. They jumped into action and determined more bandwidth was the answer. We became the first institution in Kansas City to use Google Fiber’s 5 Gig service. Our teams got to work on the technical aspects of the upgrades: a new firewall, new fiber installed inside and outside, and 20 new wireless access points. This joint effort enabled us to provide reliable, fast connectivity, not only to the on-site NFL staff, but also to our Museum and Memorial guests. 

It's not just NFL fans who travel far and wide to experience our grounds, every year visitors from around the world come to the Museum and Memorial to immerse themselves in history. However, we know not everyone is able to visit us in person, therefore, it is core to our mission that we harness the power of digitization to share our resources and history with a global audience. Now, our team is in the process of digitizing our entire collection, with three-dimensional objects soon to come, making everything accessible through our Online Connections Database. Google Fiber’s reliability, and even faster upload and download speeds with our new 5 Gig service, has been critical in this process. This enhanced connectivity will continue to benefit our guests for years to come.

These upgrades are also critical to our annual Memorial Day Celebrations, which we anticipate will be tremendously successful. 

We have many new, exciting exhibits debuting this summer:  

• The Entertaining the Troops exhibit provides a glimpse into the life of a WWI soldier beyond the battlefield. 

• The Bergman Family Gallery and Open Storage Center debuted earlier this month, offering a unique opportunity to view objects and artifacts that were otherwise unavailable to visitors. 

• On June 8, Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics opens to the public. This exhibit explores the past, present, and future of prosthetics design, with stories from professional athletes, veterans, children, and more. 

We invite you to visit us. We’re confident you will feel inspired by this unique, historical landmark in Kansas City, and learn something new about those who served in World War I, performing their duty with courage, patriotism, sacrifice, and honor.

Posted by Chris Wyche, National WWI Museum and Memorial, Vice President of Facilities, Operations Management and Technology

Today, we’re introducing you to one of our Community Foundation of Huntsville’s Digital Inclusion Fund grant recipients, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy, a Alabama based nonprofit that uses the theater to help kids develop real world skills. Karen Mockensturm, Executive Director, shares how they’re implementing technical theater and performing arts training for local youth with Google Fiber’s support for their tech theatre lab. 

At Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy (FPCTA), we teach life skills through stage skills. It’s our goal that every child who walks through our doors leaves empowered to be an advocate for themself and feels inspired to tell their own story.

This mission started at an unusual time. As you may know, Huntsville is also known as “Rocket City” due to the development of the, yes, rockets in our city that put the first people on the moon. In accordance with this fact, FPCTA was founded in 1961 — the same time our city population was massively expanding due to a large influx of people supporting the aerospace and scientific communities. 

This was part of a major expansion of Huntsville’s arts community. Along with FPCTA, the Huntsville Ballet was founded; the Huntsville Arts Museum had a major expansion; the Youth Symphony was founded; and our Huntsville Symphony went professional. Simply put: This was a time when our region was majorly defining its arts and culture landscape.

Since then, we’ve had more than a million people come through our doors. Today we serve as a gateway for children’s theatre and professional culture arts in the area, at this point serving around 31,000 people a year. 

For the most part that means teaching performing arts skills, but there’s always been an element of technical theater that permeates what we do. Through our eight-person-space STEAM Lab, we teach the foundations and the intricacies of lighting design, audio engineering, set design, props making, costume design, and more. 

This is why we’re incredibly excited that the Google Fiber Digital Inclusion grant has supported us to launch our tech theater lab which is key to preparing today's students for pre-advanced manufacturing, audio engineering and other creative industry careers. This is the pilot program for a part of our planned capital expansion which includes a 100% accessible, 35,700 square foot theatre arts campus. This brand new facility will feature a new 355 seat theater, a flexible black box space, classroom spaces, a dance studio — and a full tech lab, including separate film and music studios.

I was hired in 2012 as Executive Director with the charge of making sure that our organization would move smoothly into the next iteration of our long-term legacy. In knowing we have support through so many channels and seeing our theater step into a bigger pair of shoes, I know we’re well on our way to accomplishing exactly that.

Posted by Karen Mockensturm, Executive Director, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy

Even in the digital age, libraries continue to serve the central function of connecting many in our communities to the larger world. Today, Shawn Bakker, President of Nashville Public Library Foundation shares how the organization brings additional resources to help serve the library’s clients in new ways, including expanding digital equity across Nashville. 

In the library of the 21st century, books are only half the story. Today’s community library is an agile information hub for personal empowerment, continuously adapting to meet the needs of its patrons and the rapidly changing circumstances of our society. Government funding pays for staff, books and buildings, but the programs that make Nashville Public Library a community jewel require more support than is available in public funds. The Nashville Public Library Foundation (NPLF) provides that bridge.

Since its creation in 1997, the Nashville Public Library Foundation, has raised over $65 million, from individuals and organizations, to advance the impact and reach of Nashville Public Library programs and initiatives that exist beyond the budget of Metro government. Gifts to the Foundation ignite a world of opportunity and access for people of all ages through investment in library resources that build literacy, digital skills, workforce readiness, lifelong learning and ultimately, create better lives. Support from NPLF enables the library to build robust programs, and pivot when circumstances require.  

We are especially proud of our partnerships with community pillars, like Google Fiber, whose values align with ours and whose generosity helps NPL meet the growing needs of Nashvillians.   Google Fiber’s investment in the Foundation is enabling life-changing initiatives like NPL’s Digital Inclusion program.

Digital inclusion refers to the work necessary to ensure that all communities, especially those with the most barriers to access, have the tools needed to thrive in our modern, internet-based society. This includes not only access to hardware, software and the internet, but also the knowledge and support to effectively use those resources. Put simply: digital divide is the problem. Digital equity is the goal. Digital inclusion is the pathway.  

Nashville Public Library is a central hub for this work in our community, and many of its programs are aimed toward seniors, who often have the greatest need.  NPL’s Digital Inclusion program offers in person training to adults at branches, community centers and partner organizations throughout the city.  Library staff travel throughout Nashville, delivering services and resources to make seniors feel connected, valued and empowered. Since the program's inception in 2017, it has served 1,500 to 2,000 seniors annually and was one of the programs highlighted in the NPL Library of the Year Award. 

Participants report using their newfound skills for pursuit of college degrees, new jobs, telehealth visits, and to facilitate family connections. One graduate shared with us recently, “During the pandemic, thanks to the wonderful people at NPL’s Digital Inclusion program, I got an iPad and learned how to see and chat with my grandson.”  The benefits are immediate, and for some of Nashville’s seniors, life changing. 

Steadfast partners like Google Fiber allow Nashville Public Library to focus on creating dramatic impacts for Nashvillians and programs that help our community become a more literate, imaginative, and equitable place.  

Posted by Shawn Bakker, President, Nashville Public Library Foundation