Google Student Blog

Introducing the Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities

2009-11-13T09:43:00.001-08:00

[Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog]

Today we're excited to announce the most recent addition to our scholarship programs in Europe, the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. This scholarship is designed for students with disabilities who are pursuing degrees in the field of computer science anywhere in the European Union, plus Switzerland and Israel. Multiple scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic performance and demonstrated passion for computer science.

Scholarships will be granted for the 2010/2011 academic year, and recipients will be invited to attend an all-expenses-paid retreat at Google's Engineering Center in Zurich in 2010.

Here's what Nelson Mattos, our VP for Product and Engineering in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has to say about this scholarship: "We're committed to diversifying the long-term engineering talent pool for the industry as a whole. We hope that this scholarship will increase opportunities for students with disabilities and encourage them to pursue careers in computer science. The retreat fosters relationships so that scholars can form a supportive network lasting the full length of their academic studies and beyond."

We know that a diverse group of people use our tools and services and only an equally diverse workforce can anticipate our users' needs. We've found that the diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures leads to the creation of better products to the benefit of all users of the Internet. We hope that this scholarship works towards that end.

The deadline to apply is March 15th 2010. For more details, visit www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe.

Posted by Beate List, EMEA University Programmes and Eleanor Mulligan, EMEA Diversity and Inclusion

Flying (and landing) in a WiFi Wonderland

2009-11-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we announced an expansion of our Virgin America WiFi sponsorship to also include 47 airports. Both programs will offer free WiFi through January 15, 2010 and will cover more than 10 million passengers traveling this holiday season. There's no Google account or credit card required to log on, but we'll be offering the option to try out a Google product and also offer the chance to donate to one of three charities; we'll be matching donations up to $250,000.

We hope that this makes travel to be with friends and family that much better this holiday season.

You can learn more about the program at http://www.freeholidaywifi.com

Posted by Jeff Aguero, Product Marketing Manager

Googlers Beta - 2009 Edition!

2009-11-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

We continue the Googlers Beta Series with a story from Alyssa Daw, a Google Summer Intern and BS student from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, who will share with you her experience as a Software Engineer in Test (SET) Intern in our Kirkland office.

Interested in joining our next class of summer interns? Visit www.google.com/students to apply today!

Alyssa Daw was offered as an Software Engineering in Test (SET) with Google last winter and prepared vigorously by taking advanced coursework in computer science. "I was absolutely ecstatic when I got an internship at Google and I immediately set out to prepare myself by registering for the most difficult courses that I could for spring quarter," she says.

After her winter quarter, Alyssa was diagnosed with a rare medical condition and, after considering the severity of her situation, she contacted Google to give up her offer. "I called my manager to say that he could find someone else," she says. "But instead of taking me up on my offer, he offered to hold the job for me for as long as I wanted it - even if it meant finding shorter projects in case I needed to start late."

Alyssa joined Google this summer in the Seattle office as an intern in our SET group. And although her situation caused her to begin the internship behind schedule, she still had a very successful summer with us. "In the end, I did have to start a couple of weeks late, but the experience was amazing! I definitely felt the support from my whole team, especially my host who ended up getting Vice President approval for some of my accommodations."

Alyssa knew she was going to spend her summer as an SET, but she didn't quite understand what that meant at the time. "Before my internship, I thought that a Test Engineer primarily spent their time testing, and I am sure that in some cases this is true. However, during my internship with Google the only tests that I ran were against my own code - just like any other developer. I also got the experience of talking to users (in this case, other Googlers), and designing and developing a product that fit their specifications."

Her contribution to Google? A tool that allows admins to organize and display information about test labs. "I have never worked in a place where it was so easy to write quality code, test the code, have the code reviewed, and see all the comments, changes, test coverage, and more in one place. This is all thanks to some stellar internal tools. As I got into my own project, it hit me: I was adding to the stellar tools! It felt great to be giving back in this way, and to know that future Googlers would use my tool to make their lives easier.

2010 Google Online Marketing Challenge

2009-11-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

"Students have first hand experience with real clients and real budgets to get real results. Is there a better way to gain experience with the real world?"

"The Challenge energized me and my students. The ability to work with a real-life client and spend "real money" on Google AdWords was unique and exciting."

Registration for the 2010 Google Online Marketing Challenge is now open!

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global student competition open to any higher education institution anywhere in the world. The 2009 Challenge had over 10,000 students in 57 countries competing and we want this year's Challenge to grow even more .... please help us to get the word out!

How it works ....

Teams of 3-6 students receive US$200 of online advertising with AdWords and then find local businesses to work with to devise an online marketing campaign. Teams outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess the results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing. The winners are judged by an international panel of independent academics.

The challenge is a great way to get you and your classmates involved in the quickly evolving world of online marketing. It's a skill you'll want to have as you graduate and prepare to enter a tough job market and it's definitely a fun way to gain real-world experience with a real client.

Registration ....

Your professor, lecturer or whoever teaches you, enters their student team into the Challenge. If you think your professors, lecturers or tutors might be interested in signing their classes up for the Challenge, let them know about this opportunity! Your professor can obtain more information in the Academic Guide (http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/students_guides.html) which is filled with information your professor will want to know to decide if the Challenge is right for their class.

The Challenge is open to any university, any discipline, at the graduate or undergraduate level in any country.

Timeline ....

Registration closes: January 22, 2010

Challenge starts: January 28, 2010

Challenge ends: June 4, 2010

Winners announced: July 2010

Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs Specialist

Growing the next generation of computer scientists and business leaders

2009-10-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

We had a busy summer here at Google interacting with students through a wide variety of scholarship, internship and networking opportunities across North America. Here's a look back at a few of our programs (you can bet we'll be hosting them again!) along with news on some upcoming initiatives.

Rising college sophomores participated in two Google programs: Google FUSE, in its inaugural year, and the Google Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI).

For FUSE, we welcomed 50 rising college sophomores to our New York City office for a three-day retreat designed to connect students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computer science. The retreat focused on making connections between students and Googlers, encouraging students to create meaningful academic experiences and allowing them to learn more about possible career paths via hands-on activities, panel discussions and a bit of fun around the New York City area.

Another group of twenty rising sophomores spent two weeks at the Googleplex in Mountain View for the second annual Computer Science Summer Institute. This special program included an interactive and collaborative Computer Science curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. Students worked in teams to create an interactive web application using Python in Google App Engine. When not in class, they heard technical talks from Google engineers, spoke with professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a Computer Science degree. They also had some fun joining the Bay Area summer interns on a boat cruise and catching a baseball game after an exciting San Francisco scavenger hunt.

In addition, our engineering internship program hosted more than 450 college (undergraduate and graduate) interns in 15 locations across North America. These interns were an integral part of the engineering team and made significant contributions this summer working on exciting projects including Android, Chrome, Docs and machine translation.

We also had more than 100 students working across multiple functions, including sales and engineering in Mountain View, New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Boston as part of the Building Opportunities for Leadership and Development (BOLD) Program. BOLD is a 10-week internship program designed to provide exposure to the technology industry for students from groups that are historically underrepresented in technology. This summer experience includes a unique glimpse into a business or engineeringcareer, professional development and leadership courses, as well as one-on-one mentorship designed to further support professional growth.

Of course, we realize that growing future leaders in engineering and business doesn't just start with college students. For this reason, we partner with the LEAD programs in both businessand engineering to encourage outstanding high school students to pursue careers in these fields. This year, all four LEAD Summer Engineering Institute participants had the opportunity to tour a local Google office to attend technical talks and interact with Google engineers (okay, with some tasty food and video games thrown in as well).

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to recognizing student achievements and promoting leadership, we also offer a number of academic scholarships. We are currently accepting applications for the Google Lime Scholarship for Student with Disabilities in the U.S. and Canada, and the Anita Borg Scholarship in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the United States. In case you're curious, we offer a host of scholarships for many other international regions.

If one or more of these opportunities sounds like something you'd like to participate in, you can find applications for full time opportunities and summer internship opportunities on ourstudent job site. Visit our scholarship page for more information on our scholarship opportunities. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on application deadlines and new program announcements.

Making an early connection playing People Bingo at Google FUSE.

Taking a break from bowling during Google FUSE.

Posted by Kyle Ewing, Talent and Outreach Programs - University Programs and Recruiting

Fast, simple and stylish: Not your typical web browser

2009-10-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome is a web browser designed to load web pages and web applications at lightning speed. Whether it's searching directly and quickly from the browser's address bar when you need to do some intensive research, or getting to the websites you rely on quickly at the click of the mouse, Google Chrome is just fast. Google Chrome celebrated its first birthday just over a month ago with a brand new stable release, which means even more speed improvements, as well as a fresh redesign of some of its most loved features.

More recently, we introduced Artist Themes for Google Chrome. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from across the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. Since then, we've enjoyed hearing thoughts from our users on these designs and how they've used them to personalize the browser. We've also been intrigued by the ways in which these themes have had interesting and unusual cultural resonance with people around the world.

To continue celebrating this collaboration of engineering and art, we've collaborated with our friends at YouTube to launch a new video (with a surprise ending) that we hope showcases the full beauty of these themes. Check it out at youtube.com/googlechromethemes or click the image below. And if you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give it a whirl.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Google Chrome Team

U2 on YouTube

2009-10-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

Want to watch the first ever global concert webcast?

This Sunday, October 25th @ 8:30 p.m. (PDT) tune in to see the world's biggest band performing on the world's largest stage. YouTube and U2 have joined forces to live stream U2's performance this Sunday at The Rose Bowl Stadium.

Available internationally in the following countries: US, UK, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, NZ, Ireland, Mexico, India, Israel, South Korea, and Netherlands. It's happening "With or Without You" and it's an experience you wont want to miss.

Posted by Ed Sanders, Marketing Manager

A holiday gift from Virgin America and Google!

2009-10-20T14:33:00.001-07:00

In case you didn't see our announcement yesterday, Google is partnering with Virgin America to provide free WiFi on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010. Travel can be hectic during the holidays, so at least this way you can spend your time in the air staying connected to friends and family or getting some last-minute cramming in for your Chem final.

You can find out more about our partnership, where Virgin America flies and how the in-flight WiFi service works at www.freeholidaywifi.com.

Posted by Jeff Aguero, Product Marketing Manager

Get your campus featured in Street View on Google Maps

2009-10-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

From the comfort of your own dorm room, Street View on Google Maps lets you scope out a restaurant before heading out there for a date (oh look, there's a flower shop next door) or preview your spring break hotel to be sure it meets your strict requirements (oh look, the beach is right across the street). But wouldn't it be nice if you could see more places in Street View? Places like hiking or biking trails, sports stadiums, and maybe even your university campus!

Freshmen could easily study what all the campus buildings look like, and your family could get a better sense of your new home. Think back to when you were applying to schools - wouldn't it have been handy to be able to virtually tour college campuses? Or better yet, picture how nice a Street View walk down memory lane will be after you graduate and start to feels pangs of nostalgia for college life.

Good news: you can now nominate your campus to be photographed for Street View on Google Maps. We've created the Street View trike, a mechanical masterpiece made of 3 bicycle wheels and a mounted Street View camera, to take pictures of places like university campuses that cannot be reached by car. Visit www.google.com/trike to nominate your school for a visit from the Street View trike.

To get an idea of what Street View pictures taken by the trike look like, you can check out San Diego State University, the first university included in Google Maps:

View Larger Map

So far we've taken the trike to a few other campuses, including the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, but all of you have a chance to nominate your school to be included next. Of course, we'll make sure to work directly with the administration at your school to get the necessary permissions and approvals before coming on campus - and, as with all Street View imagery, we'll blur identifiable faces.

We're also accepting nominations in 5 other categories for where to send the Street View trike next:

Parks & Trails
Pedestrian Malls (e.g., outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
Theme Parks & Zoos
Landmarks
Sports Venues (e.g., golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)

Head to www.google.com/trike by October 28 to submit your nomination. After we comb through the submissions and pick out the finalists, you will have the opportunity to vote on a winner from each category for the Street View trike to visit. May the best campus win!

Blog Action Day

2009-10-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today – October 15 – is known as Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites bloggers across the globe by posting about the same topic on the same day to help bring awareness to a certain issue. This year, the discussion is about Climate Change and we hope you'll check out the Official Google Blog to learn more about some of the steps we take as a company to address this important issue.

If you have blogs of your own, we also encourage you to post your own thoughts about the climate crisis and maybe some of the steps you're taking to contribute to change.

Posted by the Google for Students Blog team

Introducing Google Building Maker

2009-10-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ever found yourself being an armchair tourist looking at 3D buildings of your home town in Google Earth? Have you ever wanted to highlight that famous building in your city or on your campus, but not really been sure where to start?

Building Maker helps you put buildings on the 3D map.

Today we launched Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) online tool for creating buildings for Google Earth. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.

Check out this video to see Building Maker in action:

For now, you can choose to make buildings in any of about 50 cities. We'll keep adding more cities, but don't feel left out if we don't have your hometown yet — modeling in a place you've never been is a fantastic way to discover more about it.

Simply, make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth installed on your computer. If you're on a Mac, you will need to download the Google Earth plug-in directly.

Building Maker is free and available in 14 languages. Go to www.google.com/buildingmaker to join the worldwide mapping community. Have fun!

Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager and Matt Simpson, User Experience Designer

Driving the Solar System with Google

2009-10-12T15:39:00.000-07:00

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Stephen Savage join us here again. Stephen is Arizona State University's Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager of the Archaeological Research Institute at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. You might remember his previous posts about Exploring exploplanets using Google Earth's API or his work on the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land.]

For years, astronauts and rocket scientists at NASA and JPL have had all the fun. Billions of people on Earth have seen pictures of Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt driving their "dune buggy" on the Moon. Billions more have seen pictures of NASA's Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity. We've all wished we could be the ones to take these incredible toys out for a spin on the Red Planet or the Moon.

Now, thanks to Google, you can do the next best thing -- you can drive a virtual rover model on Google's Mars or Moon (or a skateboard on Earth), and experience the real topography of these places. We at ASU developed a "Drive the Solar System" website where you can explore how the power of Google Mars, Google Moon and Google Earth has been brought to the web. You can put your rover or skateboard down anyplace on Mars, the Moon or Earth and drive it anywhere you want to go. Explore the Apollo landing sites or Olympus Mons, the largest volcanic cone in the solar system. Drive down the Valles Marinaris, the canyon on Mars that dwarfs Arizona's Grand Canyon, or kick-flip your skateboard down the Amazon. And that's not all. You can visit all the other planets and the largest moons in the Solar System too.

But you can do more than drive or look at these strange new worlds -- you can also look at these places in depth with detailed information about each place you can visit included.

So if you've ever wanted to be an astronaut, visit http://gaialab.asu.edu/SolarSystem and see what you've been missing!

Posted by Stephen Savage, Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager, Archaeological Research Institute, School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University

Announcing our 2009 Google AISES Scholars!

2009-10-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

Google and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society are proud to announce our second class of Google AISES Scholars. Please join us in congratulating our nine 2009 Google AISES Scholars!

Bryan Bailey, University of Maryland
Vanessa Benally, Fort Lewis College
Alexander Brown, University of New Mexico
Corinne Cameron, University of Alaska Anchorage
Russell Harjo, Northeastern State
Kasra Manavi, Texas A&M
Alicia Montoya, University of New Mexico
Bryan Parker II, University of Texas at Dallas
Michael McGahey, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute

Google AISES scholars will each receive a USD $10,000 academic scholarship for the 2009-2010 academic year and are invited to attend the annual Google Scholars' Retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California in 2010. The retreat is a time for Google to recognize the students’ hard work and achievements, and to provide the scholars with an opportunity to meet computing professionals and network with other scholars. We hope this program will encourage students to continue to achieve great things in their studies and inspire them to become role models and leaders in science and technology.

To learn more about Google's scholarship opportunities, please visit www.google.com/jobs/scholarships.

Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs Specialist

Googlers Beta - 2009 Edition!

2009-10-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

We are relaunching our Googlers Beta Series and bringing you the unique stories and experiences of Google interns. Our first post for the season comes from Asit Mishra, a Google Summer Intern and PhD student from Penn State University, who will share with you his experience as a Software Engineer (SWE) Intern in our Seattle office.

Asit's Story:

Think about the 100+ tools that Google has launched, the billions who query our search engine everyday, and the 10,000+ crazy (in a good way) software engineers working at Google; there is a plethora of jobs that our server platform machines must serve each day. Our machines serve a diverse set of workloads, and managing and making sense of these workloads is a big challenge. But learning the behavior of these workloads can help us, among many other things, to make better scheduling decisions, to better project our machine growth, and to customize our cells to handle the jobs better. During my internship, I worked on a very interesting, and in my opinion, high-impact project where I modeled the workload of Google's machines.

I used a variety of tools, including time-series modeling, clustering and statistical methods to capture the workload signatures. After months of brainstorming with my mentor (Joseph Hellerstein) and the cluster management team, I was at a point where I could categorize the workloads into smaller groups. This gave us an opportunity to investigate the workload behavior at a macro-level and makes the analysis simpler.

Aside from the free food, massages and the rock-band set-up, I found the "Google-culture" to be really amazing. It is not very different from the culture one would see at a university or research lab. The openness and the helping attitude of Googlers, here, helped me a lot in my work. Between the numerous brainstorming sessions with my mentor and the cluster management team and the two trips down to Mountain View to dig-deep into our findings, these experiences have gone a long way in shaping the outcome of my project and enhancing my overall understanding of Computer Science. For me, it's been one of the most productive and enriching experiences within a 3-month span.

I had never seen terabytes worth of data before coming here! Once, my mentor told me that here at Google people don't worry about storing megabytes or gigabytes of data; if it's terabytes it a slight concern and if it's petabytes - that's where you actually start thinking.

A note from Joseph Hellerstein, Asit's host: We had great fun with Asit during the summer, and it was very productive. Asit's work is impacting how Google does cluster scheduling and capacity planning. Also, we submitted a paper to ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review. Oh, and we got some really cool jackets for our work with the Google Cluster Management Team.

Want more information on internships at Google? Visit http://www.google.com/jobs/intern for more information. You can also learn more about the exciting research going on at Google by visiting http://research.google.com/.

YouTube EDU goes international - a global classroom for all

2009-10-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Universities from the Europe and Israel have now joined YouTube EDU. The site now provides over 45,000 videos from over 20 top universities in nine countries with academic lectures, public talks and college life from universities including Cambridge University, The Open University, (UK), INSEAD, (France),Bocconi University (Italy), Open University of Catalonia, (Spain) University of Gronigen (The Netherlands), Moscow State University (Russia) - in addition to the 200 US universities already on the site.

The international version now includes a drop-down menu to filter content based on language of choice. For example, select French and find content from HEC in Paris and also the French-Canadian University of Montreal, or set to 'All' to browse videos in all languages. The Directory also enables subjects to be browsed - e.g. select 'Business', 'Engineering' or 'Literature' to see content available. Although this feature is currently only available for English at the moment, we are looking to roll-out to languages as more universities join.

Now, go learn something!

Posted by Anna De Paula Hanika on behalf of the YouTube EDU team

Just released: new version of Google SketchUp

2009-10-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

Students, educators and fans of SketchUp, rejoice: we just released Google SketchUp Pro 7.1! This new version is available as a free upgrade to your existing student, instructor or lab license. If you're new to SketchUp 3D modeling software, Google offers great pricing for the education community. Students pay just $49 for a year-long Pro license, lab licenses are between $15-$30 per seat, depending whether you choose a 1, 2 or 3 year license; and, instructors can get themselves a Pro license at no charge. Learn more on our Education program on the SketchUp website.

SketchUp Pro 7.1 has been our most quickly adopted update because it adds a bunch of new features while providing enhanced performance and fixes for a lot of known issues. Of particular interest for Education is the new feature called Get Photo Texture, which allows you to quickly model buildings using Google Maps Street View imagery.

A popular K-12 activity guides students through the process of modeling a local building (such as their school building) using Google Earth and Google SketchUp. With the release of 7.1, the activity gets even more compelling because students can immediately access Street View imagery to apply to their model. Students can also access and edit existing buildings in the Google 3D Warehouse using the new "Nearby Buildings" feature.

For industrial design, mechanical design and architecture/landscape courses, LayOut 2.1 is bundled with the release. LayOut 2.1 improves on its rich 2D presentation features by adding Dimensioning. Now any of models can be annotated or dimensioned directly in LayOut without having to go back to the original model. Scaled printing, simple construction documentation, woodworking and even site planning is a snap. That's right, you heard the pun, the new dimensioning allows you to snap and measure from points in the embedded model!

All users will see faster performance when it comes to large, complex or heavily textured models. Google SketchUp Pro 7.1 continues the tradition of SketchUp's rich feature set, intuitive interface and our commitment to offering great pricing for Educators and Students. Learn more on our SketchUp website for Education.

Posted by James Therrien, Google SketchUp Team

Day in the life of a Docs student

2009-09-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog)

The Google Docs team is getting ready for back to school. We've been doing our homework this summer to make your school year go a little smoother. Today we're launching a handful of features that will benefit both students and teachers. Speaking from experience, as students ourselves, we know that these features will come in handy on any given day. Check out the schedule below to see how.

Time
Schedule

9:00am
Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253]

Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I'm on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words.

Like any research essay, I have to double space the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don't have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document.

10:00am
Gym break

I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs templates. Today I'll be using the Runner's Log:

11:00am Hiking Club [Student Union]

The other club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted.

The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With Google Sites we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page.

12:00pm
Lunch

I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a mobile phone.

1:00pm
Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123]

This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don't miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it's much easier to read and understand each others' equation notations.

And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I've missed.

2:00pm
Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320]

In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it's even easier to make and edit these slides.

Want to try out these features in your routine? Find some more detailed information about the features here.

Posted by: Rita Chen and Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Interns

Creating your digital resume

2009-09-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

Over on the Docs Blog, Dr. Helen Barrett - a retired teacher educator and independent researcher - has written up some good tips about using "E-Portfolios" as a sort of digital resume, and how you can use Google tools to help you create your own.

If you're interested in learning more, check out this example and stop by the Docs Blog to read more about how you can use Google Sites and Docs - among other online tools - to build your own virtual portfolio.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Google Docs Marketing Manager

Current Google Scholarship Opportunities for Students in Computer Science

2009-09-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

We are are pleased to announce the launch of 3 scholarship opportunities for students in Computer Science: Google SHPE Conference Travel Scholarship (new!), Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities and the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (U.S. and Canada).

Google SHPE Conference Travel Scholarship

Deadline to apply: September 30, 2009

Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities
Deadline to apply: December 15, 2009

Google Anita Borg Scholarship (U.S. and Canada)

Deadline to apply: February 1, 2010

To Apply

To apply for these scholarship opportunities, please visit our Online Application for Google Scholarships & Awards Programs.

If you are a first time user, you will need to register and create a profile, as well as a user-name and password. If you are already registered, please log-in to your account to complete your application.

Read the application instructions or visit the FAQ page for more information.

Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs

Google Calendar makes it easier to root for your teams

2009-09-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

Born into a lineage of former UCLA Bruins, I was born wearing baby blue and gold, and thrilled to become a part of the tradition when, as a student, I trekked out to the Rose Bowl to support my favorite football team. I still like to keep up with the games -- even if I'm no longer sitting in the student section -- which is why the recently launched Sports Calendar is my new favorite feature in Google Calendar.

In addition to pro sports, there is now a way an easy to keep up with NCAA game schedules. For all you Bruins fans like me, this schedule really comes in handy.

Even better, the Calendar team has also launched a trend chart indicating the popularity of team calendars, which might help ignite some of that competitive spirit. (I, for one, cannot bear to see the Trojans ranked above my Bruins!)

To subscribe to your team's calendar - or other teams you'd like to keep up with - log in to your Calendar and Click "Add" to browse some of the interesting calendars that you can follow. And make sure to spread the word on campus so that your school team has a better ranking than your rival's, regardless of the scoreboard.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Bruin fan for life

Five million students going back to school are "Going Google"

2009-09-08T11:52:00.001-07:00

It's always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of this fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have "gone Google" and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using Google Apps on campus has increased by 400%. Because more schools sign up for Apps everyday, we wanted to celebrate the start of the 2009 school year by launching a new site that shows off some of these schools, provides product tips and tricks, introduces a community discussion forum and more.

A snapshot of some of the thousands of schools going Google this Fall. Every location in green indicates Apps users.

When you visit the site, you'll also find an interactive map packed with interesting trivia. For example, in addition to the 70,000 students using Apps at Temple University, their 5,000 staff and faculty were given a choice between Gmail and alternative vendor, and over 90% chose to go Google. Or when Kent State first deployed, they saw more than 700 students migrating each hour. And a single admin at Montana State successfully deployed over 30,000 accounts in less than 90 days. Or as we learned in the recent webinar from another school on the map — Notre Dame — they saved $1.5 million by switching to Apps. You can hear their full story in this video:

We hope more schools will continue to go Google and bring Apps to their campuses in an effort to improve communication and collaboration while cutting costs and resources. In the meantime, check out our site and find out what Apps has done for other schools and what Apps can do for your school — and if you're already a part of the movement, add yourself to the map!

Posted by Jason Cook and Miriam Schneider, Apps Education Edition team

Finding great stuff to read online

2009-09-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

It could be argued that the evolution of internet memes can be largely attributed to students. It all started with forwarded links and emails ("OMG, have you seen this?!"), and has now developed into a set of online tools and sites designed specifically to help people consume and share lots of information.

But, as we all know, there are too many blogs and sites to possibly keep up with everything. So the real question is how to find the right sources to read or follow. I only followed a handful of blogs when I first started using Google Reader to track my favorite sites. Over time, I started incorporating recommendations from my friends, and my reading list quickly grew from 4 blogs to 34.

The Reader Team has worked hard to launch several sharing features that make it easier to find and subscribe to blogs that your friends like. But we thought we'd take it one step further by adding recommendations from some of the web's most prominent bloggers could to help take the stress out of the challenge of finding good stuff to read. First we asked leaders across a variety of fields -- journalism, tech, fashion, and food -- what they read online. Then we compiled their responses into our second edition of Power Readers, which we've expanded from last year's Power Readers in Politics.

Curious where Arianna Huffington goes to get different perspectives on the news? Ever wonder what other food blogs Mark Bittman reads? Visit www.google.com/powerreaders to explore and subscribe to recommended reading lists from all of our power readers, or to any individual blogs they like.

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Announcing our 2009 Google United Negro College Fund Scholars!

2009-08-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Google and the United Negro College Fund are proud to announce our 2009 Google UNCF Scholars!

Google UNCF scholars will each receive a USD $10,000 academic scholarship and are invited to an all-expenses paid trip to the Google Headquarters in California in 2010. While at the Googleplex they'll have the opportunity to meet each other and attend technical talks and professional development workshops, as well as explore the San Francisco Bay area. We hope this program will encourage students to excel in their studies in years to come, inspire them to become role models and leaders, and attract more African-American students to the fields of science and technology.

Please join us in congratulating our Google UNCF Scholars!

Brandon Fields, Tuskegee University
Brandon Whitehead, Georgia Institute of Technology
Brett Matthews, Georgia Institute of Technology
Courtney Daley, Rochester Institute of Technology
Dwayne Reeves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Edward William, University of Idaho
Ikpeme Erete, Georgia Institute of Technology
Kimberly Davis, Talladega College
Mauricia Ragland, Clark Atlanta University
Miyako Jones, University of Michigan-Flint
Nancy Douyon, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Njinda Ngwanchang, University of Massachusetts
Paula Laurent, DePaul University
Sean Sanders, Georgia Institute of Technology
Shani Ingram, Tennessee State University
Stephen Guy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Stephen Oney, Carnegie Mellon University
Wendy Logan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

To learn more about Google's Scholarship Programs, please visit www.google.com/jobs/scholarships.

Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs Specialist

Love school with Google Docs

2009-08-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Time to brush off the sand from lazy days at the beach and hit the books. Time for group projects, club registrations, and dorm events. As I start my senior year at Stanford, this is the last time I'll experience back to school, and I'm hoping to make the most of it with a little help from Google Docs.

I've collaborated with classmates on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations throughout my college career, but after interning at Google for a summer and talking to many of you about how you use Google Docs, there are a few new ideas I'm itching to try, like new templates for resident assistants, teaching assistants, and student leaders.

Curious to learn more about Google Docs yourself? Check out our new Google Docs page for college students. You'll find tips and tricks -- based off much of your own feedback -- for great ways to save time with Google Docs both in and out of the classroom.

For one particularly fun way to reap the benefits of collaborating with Google Docs, check out this video about a lovestruck student on a mission. Enjoy, and have a great school year!

Posted by Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Intern

Back-to-School with Google Code University

2009-08-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

The fall semester is around the corner, meaning you're probably starting to think about what new subjects and topics you'll tackle. If you are studying CS or considering taking a Computer Science course we thought you might be interested in Google Code University.

Here you'll find a repository of educational material, including tutorials, lecture slides, and videos focused entirely on computer science. The content - developed by the best schools around the country - is cutting edge. Since all of it is Creative Commons licensed, you can even download it and reuse it in your class. With freshly created content by the University of Southern California, California Polytechnic State University and the University of Washington, there's lots to check out, so give it a whirl and learn something new!

By Andrea Held, Google Code University Team

Time	Schedule
9:00am	Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253]
	Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I'm on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words. Like any research essay, I have to double space the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don't have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document.
10:00am	Gym break
	I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs templates. Today I'll be using the Runner's Log:
11:00am	Hiking Club [Student Union]
	The other club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted. The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With Google Sites we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page.
12:00pm	Lunch
	I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a mobile phone.
1:00pm	Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123]
	This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don't miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it's much easier to read and understand each others' equation notations. And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I've missed.
2:00pm	Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320]
	In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it's even easier to make and edit these slides.