Tag Archives: Education

Supporting education with a new line of Chromebooks

Chromebooks play an important role in the classroom, helping 50 million students and teachers learn and collaborate from wherever they are. So as the education world adjusts to new changes, especially when it comes to virtual learning, our devices should too. Teachers need more powerful machines to help them plan and share lessons, manage student performance and teach both remotely and in person; IT teams need devices they can easily repair, repurpose and upgrade; and students need ones that keep their personal and school data safe, and can easily fit into a backpack.

So today, we’re introducing a new line of more secure and sustainable Chromebook devices — plus updated programs, resources and Chrome OS advances — built entirely for education.

Discover more device options

We know there are many types of Chromebooks out there, and it can be hard to find the right match. On our new Chromebook discovery page, you can easily search for device capabilities like graphic design and lesson planning. You can also find which Chromebooks have features like LTE connectivity, improved video conferencing and camera-based document scanning.

Gif of three enterprise grade Chromebooks rotating

New teacher-inspired Chromebooks — like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook and Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook — have improved stylus capabilities, design and performance. And with the same OS as their students, teachers can easily help them troubleshoot and navigate the latest updates. New student devices — including the HP Fortis 14 G10 Chromebook, ASUS Chromebook Flip CR1, Dell Chromebook 3110 and Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Go — also have greater durability and updated connectivity capabilities. And like all Chromebooks, each one has a cloud-based operating system that keeps apps and documents securely backed up, even if devices are damaged or lost.

With these new, more powerful devices, schools can continue helping students plan their futures. Read how the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania is using Chromebooks to deliver design software programs like Adobe to prepare their students for design and engineering jobs.

Repair, revive and future-proof your devices

The best way for schools to drive sustainability while cutting costs is by extending the life spans of their devices. We just announced the Chromebook repair program, where we’re working with partners like Acer and Lenovo to share more information about Chromebooks that schools can easily repair themselves with proper training. As part of the program, we’ve also introduced new resources and best practices like setting up a student-run IT shop.

Animation showing tools , with text explaining the benefits of a student-led repair program — including faster and more cost-effective repairs.

For more about these updates, visit the revamped Chrome Enterprise and Education Help Center. You can also register for our upcoming virtual event, Teach With Chrome Series, to hear from teachers and other educational leaders using Chromebooks in the classroom.

Celebrating a decade of partnering with Technovation

In 2006, engineering grad student Tara Chklovski looked around at her classroom and realized how few women and people of color were in the room. Determined to change that, Tara launched Technovation, and this year, Google is celebrating over a decade of support.

In 2010, we brought the first group of 45 girls to Google’s Mountain View cafe to learn from Google mentors how to build and bring apps to market through Technovation Girls, a program that prepares girls for tech entrepreneurship and leadership.

The first Technovation Challenge season was conducted in-person, with Google mentors helping the group to learn how to build apps using MIT App Inventor. In the decade since, Google has continued to support Technovation, both through groups of dedicated volunteers, as well as through funding. In 2017, Google hosted Technovation's World Summit, and along the way has helped Technovation reach 350,000 people across 100 countries. The collaboration also allowed Technovation’s AI education program to empower 20,000 children and parents to identify problems in their communities and develop AI-based solutions.

Through Google.org, we support organizations using technology and innovation to help more students, particularly those who have been historically underserved, get a better education. Since 2013, we’ve given more than $80 million to organizations around the globe focused on closing the computer science education access gap. And we recently shared resources to help nonprofits like Technovation that are working to close the gender gap in CS education.

To date, Google’s investment in Technovation programming totals nearly $2 million, and more than 50 Technovation alumni have worked at Google campuses around the world. Those alumnae include women like Padmapriya in India, Dalia in Palestine, Jenny and Emma in the United States, and Adelina in Moldova, who graciously agreed to share their stories about participating in Technovation.

The current Technovation Girls season is now open—if you know a girl who's ready to change the world, let her know about Technovation and encourage her to sign up. And if you want to support girls taking their first steps as technology creators and entrepreneurs, learn more about participating as a mentor or a judge. There are thousands of girls like Padmapriya, Dalia, Adelina, Emma, and Jenny who are just getting started and could use your encouragement!

2021 Year in Review: Google Quantum AI

Google’s Quantum AI team has had a productive 2021. Despite ongoing global challenges, we’ve made significant progress in our effort to build a fully error-corrected quantum computer, working towards our next hardware milestone of building an error-corrected quantum bit (qubit) prototype. At the same time, we have continued our commitment to realizing the potential of quantum computers in various applications. That's why we published results in top journals, collaborated with researchers across academia and industry, and expanded our team to bring on new talent and expertise.

An update on hardware

The Quantum AI team is determined to build an error-corrected quantum computer within the next decade, and to simultaneously use what we learn along the way to deliver helpful—and even transformational—quantum computing applications. This long-term commitment is expanded broadly into three key questions for our quantum hardware:

  1. Can we demonstrate that quantum computers can outperform the classical supercomputers of today in a specific task? We demonstrated beyond-classical computation in 2019.
  2. Can we build a prototype of an error-corrected qubit? In order to use quantum computers to their full potential, we will need to realize quantum error correction to overcome the noise that is present during our computations. As a key step in this direction, we aim to realize the primitives of quantum error correction by redundantly encoding quantum information across several physical qubits, demonstrating that such redundancy leads to an improvement over using individual physical qubits. This is our current target.
  3. Can we build a logical qubit which does not have errors for an arbitrarily long time? Logical qubits encode information redundantly across several physical qubits, and are able to reduce the impact of noise on the overall quantum computation. Putting together a few thousand logical qubits would allow us to realize the full potential of quantum computers for various applications.
An interactive map of our journey to build an error-corrected quantum computer.

An interactive map of our journey to build an error-corrected quantum computer

Progress toward building an error-corrected qubit prototype

The distance between the noisy quantum computers of today and the fully error-corrected quantum computers of the future is vast. In 2021, we made significant progress in closing this gap by working toward building a prototype logical qubit whose errors are smaller than those of the physical qubits on our chips.

This work requires improvements across the entire quantum computing stack. We have made chips with better qubits, improved the methods that we use to package these chips to better connect them with our control electronics, and developed techniques to calibrate large chips with several dozens of qubits simultaneously.

These improvements culminated in two key results. First, we are now able to reset our qubits with high fidelity, allowing us to reuse qubits in quantum computations. Second, we have realized mid-circuit measurement that allows us to keep track of computation within quantum circuits. Together, the high-fidelity resets and mid-circuit measurements were used in our recent demonstration of exponential suppression of bit and phase flip errors using repetition codes, resulting in 100x suppression of these errors as the size of the code grows from 5 to 21 qubits.

Chart chronicling repetition code

Suppression of logical errors as the number of qubits in the repetition code is increased. As we increase the code size from 5 to 21 qubits, we see 100x reduction in logical. Image acknowledgement: Kevin Satzinger/Google Quantum AI

Repetition codes, an error correction tool, enable us to trade-off between resources (more qubits) and performance (lower error) which will be central in guiding our hardware research and development going forward. This year we showed how error decreases as we increase the number of included qubits for a 1-dimensional code. We are currently running experiments to extend these results to two-dimensional surface codes which will correct errors more comprehensively.

Applications of quantum computation

In addition to building quantum hardware, our team is also looking for clear margins of quantum advantage in real world applications. With our collaborators in academia and industry, we are exploring fields where quantum computers can provide significant speedups, with realistic expectations that error-corrected quantum computers will likely require better than quadratic speedups for meaningful improvements.

As always, our collaborations with academic and industry partners were invaluable in 2021. One notable collaboration with Caltech showed that, under certain conditions, quantum machines can learn about physical systems from exponentially fewer experiments than what is conventionally required. This novel method was validated experimentally using 40 qubits and 1300 quantum operations, demonstrating a substantial quantum advantage even with the noisy quantum processors we have today. This paves the way to more innovation in quantum machine learning and quantum sensing, with potential near-term use cases.

In collaboration with researchers at Columbia University, we combined one of the most powerful techniques for chemical simulation, Quantum Monte Carlo, with quantum computation. This approach surpasses previous methods as a promising quantum approach to ground state many-electron calculations, which are critical in creating new materials and understanding their chemical properties. When we run a component of this technique on a real quantum computer, we are able to double the size of prior calculations without sacrificing accuracy of the measurements, even in the presence of noise on a device with up to 16 qubits. The resilience of this method to noise is an indication of its potential for scalability even on today’s quantum computers.

We continue to study how quantum computers can be used to simulate quantum physical phenomena—as was most recently reflected in our experimental observation of a time crystal on a quantum processor (Ask a Techspert: What exactly is a time crystal?). This was a great moment for theorists, who’ve pondered the possibility of time crystals for nearly a century. In other work, we also explored the emergence of quantum chaotic dynamics by experimentally measuring out-of-time-ordered correlations on one of our quantum computers, which was done jointly with collaborators at the NASA Ames Research Center; and experimentally measuring the entanglement entropy of the ground state of the Toric code Hamiltonian by creating its eigenstates using shallow quantum circuits with collaborators at the Technical University of Munich.

Our collaborators contributed to, and even inspired, some of our most impactful research in 2021. Quantum AI remains committed to discovering and realizing meaningful quantum applications in collaboration with scientists and researchers from across the world in 2022 and beyond as we continue our focus on machine learning, chemistry, and many-body quantum physics.

You can find a list of all our publications here.

Continuing investment in the quantum computing ecosystem

This year, at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, we reaffirmed our commitment to the roadmap and investments required to make a useful quantum computer within the decade. While we were busy growing in Santa Barbara, we also continue to support the enablement of researchers in the quantum community through our open source software. Our quantum programming framework, Cirq, continues to improve with contributions from the community. 2021 also saw the release of specialized tools in collaboration with partners in the ecosystem. Two examples of these are:

  • The release of a new Fermionic Quantum Simulator for quantum chemistry applications in collaboration with QSimulate, taking advantage of the symmetry in quantum chemistry problems to provide efficient simulations.
  • A significant upgrade to qsim which allows for simulation of noisy quantum circuits on high performance processors such as GPUs via Google Cloud, and qsim integration with NVIDIA’s cuQuantum SDK to enable qsim users to make the most of NVIDIA GPUs when developing quantum algorithms and applications.

We also released an open-source tool called stim, which provides a 10000x speedup when simulating error correction circuits.

You can access our portfolio of open-source software here.

Looking toward 2022

Resident quantum scientist Qubit the Dog taking part in a holiday sing-along.

Resident quantum scientist Qubit the Dog taking part in a holiday sing-along led by team members Jimmy Chen and Ofer Naaman.

Through teamwork, collaboration, and some innovative science, we are excited about the progress that we have seen in 2021. We have big expectations for 2022 as we focus on progressing through our hardware milestones, the discovery of new quantum algorithms, and the realization of quantum applications on the quantum processors of today. To tackle our difficult mission, we are growing our team, building on our existing network of collaborators, and expanding our Santa Barbara campus. Together with the broader quantum community, we are excited to see the progress that quantum computing makes in 2022 and beyond.

Supporting digital education in Europe

The way we teach and learn has changed. We have all seen the world shift beneath our feet during the pandemic, as homes became classrooms and teachers found new ways to connect with their students while using technology in new ways.

While schools around the world are now moving back towards in-classroom learning, the importance of access to digital tools has been brought into focus, not only to support hybrid learning practices but also to ensure students are equipped with the tools and skills that set them up for success in building the future they want for themselves.

We’re excited to see that many EU member states, guided by the Digital Education Action Plan, have allocated a significant portion of Recovery and Resilience Facility funds towards national digital education transformation plans. However, large-scale projects in digital education sometimes struggle to deliver expected benefits or outcomes, and investments in digital equipment for schools are often under-utilized. To address this challenge and to support countries with their digital education transformation plans, Google is thrilled to announce the €15 million Google for Education EU Digital Support Fund.

Working with SMEs to support digital education

The Google for Digital Education Fund is designed to foster the development of a high-performing digital education ecosystem, including the provision of infrastructure, connectivity and digital equipment, enabling digitally competent and confident teachers, and training staff. The Fund is open to local SMEs who are supporting national education projects funded by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility program. They can apply for funding from Google for the duration of the program (or until the funds have been exhausted) to cover Google's digital equipment and software. In this way, the Fund will contribute to addressing key digital education priorities in the EU by stimulating local innovation ecosystems in education and training.

A picture of a teacher wearing a mask teaching children in a classroom who all have their laptops open

The fund can be used towards supporting teacher training to help them leverage the most out of devices in the classroom

What does that look like in practice?

We have already seen impactful ways this could work across the EU region. The Municipality of Plovdiv in Bulgaria exemplifies the type of digital education transformation program that the Google Digital Education Fund intends to support. The aim of the Municipality of Plovdiv’s program was to successfully implement a cloud platform in order to deliver on the “digitalization and modernization of the learning process” and elevate the digital skills of educators and learners in all 77 of the schools in the Municipality. This program was delivered over three years from 2017-2019 and was the first digital education program of its kind in Bulgaria. Plovdiv’s School in the Cloud program has become the benchmark for all of Bulgaria and has led to widespread use of the Google for Education platform, with more than 10,000 teachers trained (over 1,000 of them certified by Google), and thousands of Chromebook devices being used across the country in accordance with acceptable use policies established by the Ministry of Education in Bulgaria.

Looking to the future

Our goal is to provide the information, tools and services that help students build knowledge, fuel curiosity, and prepare for what’s next. We are proud and excited to support the European Digital Education Action Plan, and look forward to helping EU Member States deliver successful digital education transformation programs.

The Google for Education EU Digital Support Fund is available to qualifying SMEs that are supporting EU Member State national digital education transformation programs funded through the Recovery and Resilience Facility and related to the provisioning of Chromebooks (with the associated Chrome Education Upgrade license) and Google Workspace for Education. Click here to learn more and to apply.

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Helping European small businesses grow and succeed

As European SME Week kicks off, we look at how Google can continue to support small and medium businesses continue to grow and thrive.

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A new literacy tool promoting inclusive LGBTQ+ language

Imagine living your truth, but not being able to tell anyone. That was my experience as a young queer person in small-town Alabama. Twenty years ago, nobody, including LGBTQ+ people, had the language we have today to talk about queerness or gender outside the binary. Coded language made it even more difficult to learn about the LGBTQ+ community, much less learn about myself. Even when I felt safe (mostly in anonymous chat rooms), I found it nearly impossible to talk about what I was going through.

It wasn’t until my college professor, Cliff Simon, shared his story that I first heard someone use terms like “gay” and “lesbian” without shame or judgement. Cliff’s story proved to me that I could be happy, and it’s the reason I came out — and ultimately, my inspiration to start VideoOut, an LGBTQ+ education and advocacy nonprofit.

As the population of openly LGBTQ+ people increases around the world, VideoOut aims to shepherd people from a place of limited exposure to a place of expanded understanding.

The left column displays letters in alphabetical order. In the middle, phrases like "Demisexual, Dip, Dysphoria, Femme" appear.

LGBTQ inclusive language glossary and definitions

I’m queer trans nonbinary. Not long ago, queer was a derogatory word — it’s what the bullies used when they weaponized their language against me. As attitudes and society evolved, so did our language and our understanding of the power words have to uplift or disparage people.

This year, VideoOut launched The LGBTQ+ Learning Project. It includes multiple phases, including a comprehensive educational resource and live community events that ladder up to our long term goal of building a museum on the National Mall. The Google News Initiative has supported us every step of the way during the first phase – the LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program.

Partnering with the GNI gave VideoOut the opportunity to work with a team of PhD linguists from the LGBTQ+ community to research the origin, evolution and current usage of 100 words and phrases that range from clinical terminology, like HRT and dysphoria, to slang terms used in niche communities like drag and ballroom. We will continue to expand the data visualization, designed by Polygraph, and employGoogle Trends technology to show the popularity of search terms over time.

This tool guides journalists through the complex world of LGBTQ+ vernacular. It shows who should be credited when using words that belong to marginalized communities. Most importantly, it arms reporters with knowledge, helping them to use LGBTQ+ terminology respectfully and accurately.

The program aims to inform people who are less familiar with the LGBTQ+ community, with the hopes of warming attitudes and fostering allyship. To that end, we’ve partnered with Men’s Health magazine to help contextualize the research and data in the program. We hope to reach a new audience and model how sharing information makes the most impact when it’s done across lines of difference.

The tool will be accessible through the Men’s Health website.

Queer and trans people are not new, but increasingly people are beginning to feel safe about living authentically. According to a recent Gallup poll, “One in six [U.S.] adults in Generation Z identifies as LGBT.” At the same time, a GLAAD report found 45% of non-LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. say they’re confused by the different number of terms to describe individuals who comprise the LGBTQ+ community.

Thanks to the efforts of queer and trans people on the forefront of the liberation movement, things are better now than they have ever been — but they are still fragile. The news media can help. Journalists can reference this tool to ensure they are using language appropriately. They can also interact with members of the community in their process. For example, if there is a story written about trans rights, VideoOut believes the writer should interview trans people, particularly ones who are active in the movement for trans rights.

The LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program is more than a glossary, though at its simplest, it can function that way. It’s a way to understand the LGBTQ+ community, and hopefully, it will transform the way journalists — and all of us — write and talk about LGBTQ+ people.

Two professors are leveling the field in computing research

Editor’s note: This guest post is by Professors Maria Gini and Shana Watters from the University of Minnesota.

Research is about opening up new worlds and systematically answering questions about their possibilities. But access to research opportunities, including computer science (CS) research, is not equitable: In Canada and the United States in 2020, resident students who identified as Black, Indigenous, Latino, women and intersections of these identities made up only 12.1% of CS Ph.D. enrollments. As educators, we felt compelled to address this inequity. We learned about Google’s exploreCSR program in 2018, and it’s helped us make important progress in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

exploreCSR provides faculty with funding, community, evaluation and connections to Google researchers in order to introduce students to the world of CS research. We used our first two years of exploreCSR funding to create content for an undergraduate research course and pilot it in weekend workshops. We started with the belief that all students are capable of executing research, but needed guidance on how to get started. But once we began the workshops, we realized that we needed to first establish a foundation of what research is and how it’s done. That way, students could move from sheer curiosity to hands-on practice. We also saw a need to recognize their commitment to this work through official academic credit.

Based on our learnings from the workshops, we offered a one-credit class in 2021 called “Introduction to Undergraduate Research in Computer Science.” The course helped students develop research skills like identifying and formulating research problems, reading research papers and analyzing data. Faculty mentors from a variety of backgrounds discussed their research, and mentors from Google engaged with the students through talks, panels and mock interviews. At the end of the semester, students understood how to network, present their knowledge and develop game plans to reach their computing research goals.

Our inaugural class included 45 students with a diverse range of identities, some of whom are now doing research with faculty, receiving undergraduate research funds and completing research internships. Our students reflected that having access to researchers in both academia and the tech industry opened up new ways of thinking about research. “Learning that it’s okay to change your academic and career plans really calmed some of the worries I have,” one student shared. Another learned the value of taking risks: “If you get stuck on a problem, try to jump out of the box to view it, and you might find brand new solutions which you had never imagined.”

Our goal from the start was to prepare the next generation of researchers, including many students historically marginalized in computing. And we’re still making progress. The support we received from exploreCSR and the program’s mentors helped make our first class a rewarding learning experience for both the students and instructors. Moving forward, we will work towards improving the course based on student feedback, and developing strong partnerships with local companies. And we're proud that the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering has committed to offer "Introduction to Undergraduate Research in Computer Science" as an annual course.

As the scientist Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Our students are going to explore those incredible “somethings” with purpose and direction. We look forward to their accomplishments!

Visit our websiteto learn more about exploreCSR and meet the 35 institutionsin our 2021 cycle.

Learning on the go with Classroom on Android

The past two years have seen a rapid rise in the use of educational tools by teachers and students everywhere – driven primarily by the need for distance learning. Now that educators and schools have experienced the benefits of these tools, their use continues to grow, even as many schools return to in-person and hybrid learning.

While this industry-wide shift to more hours online can be an opportunity for many, it can also be a challenge for some teachers and students, especially in places where communities rely heavily on mobile phones or because of limited internet connectivity.

Google Classroom and other Google Workspace for Education tools are designed to be used anytime, anywhere and on any device. In many countries around the world, the investments we’ve made in our mobile apps have already helped tens of millions of students keep learning remotely by using personal or shared phones.

With this in mind, we’ve launched three new features to improve access to Classroom in mobile-first and limited internet conditions.

Use Classroom when you’re offline

With the Classroom Android app, students can now continue to work and learn,, even when offline or when faced with spotty internet connections. Now students have the option – when they are online – to download assignment attachments to their phone for viewing and editing later when they are offline.

Although the ability to submit and download assignments, or pose questions and get answers, still requires an internet connection, offline mode gives students the flexibility to take schoolwork anywhere and keep learning on the go.

Gif showing how to make a file available offline in Google Classroom

Scan and upload multiple pictures with ease

Many more students today are taking and submitting photos of assignments that are easier and more ideal to complete by hand — like math or science homework.

The Classroom Android app now has a handy scan feature, which students can use to capture and combine multiple pictures into a single file. The upload action in the app now allows for easy selection and submission of multiple different types of files in a single step.

These improvements will help students submit their assignments more efficiently, even if they’re in a rush to meet a deadline.

Gif showing smart image capture in Google Classroom

Easier grading on mobile for teachers

For teachers who are primarily using a phone, we’ve made big updates to the experience of viewing and grading assignments on the Classroom Android app.

Teachers can now seamlessly swipe between students and assignments and add grades on the app. Teachers can also give feedback to students by enabling comments on individual files, even if there are multiple files in an assignment. They can comment on a file or highlight specific passages to leave more targeted feedback pinpointing improvement areas for students.

Gif of grading on mobile in Google Classroom

The vast majority of people who are new to the internet today use phones rather than computers. With these new Classroom Android app features, we’re providing students and teachers everywhere with a better mobile experience.

We are fully committed to investing in helping educators and schools spark learning and close equity gaps with more supportive, inclusive, and productive educational tools

Supporting media literacy with new partnerships

From the COVID-19 pandemic to the climate crisis, we’ve seen how misinformation can have catastrophic consequences. Misleading information can spread among family and friends, impacting not only the way people see the world and relate to each other, but the decisions they make for their health, and for their loved ones and communities.

Separating fact from fiction online has gotten more difficult, and no generation is immune: A 2019 Pew Research study found that only 26% of U.S. adults could identify a factual statement from an opinion. A Stanford University study from the same year found that two-thirds of high school students surveyed couldn’t tell the difference between news stories and sponsored content.

Communities need to be able to spot a fake story when they see it and stop it in its tracks. That’s why today, the Google News Initiative (GNI) is building on our commitment to strengthen media literacy in the U.S. through partnerships with PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs, the News Literacy Project, and Poynter’s MediaWise program.

Bridging generations with PBS Student Reporting Labs

Started in 2009, PBS Student Reporting Labs (SRL) is a leader in the youth media landscape, currently operating in more than 160 classrooms and after-school programs across the U.S. Thousands of teachers have used SRL’s journalism, civic engagement and video production resources, which train students on the ins and outs of producing reliable news, learning journalism ethics, fact checking and engaging with their communities.

Insherah Qazi from Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas explains what local school boards do and why they’re important. When the American Rescue Plan became law in March of 2021, more than 120 billion dollars was sent to K-12 schools. The money is being used for safe reopening, addressing learning loss and whatever else the district decides is necessary. Local school boards are the ones making these decisions, so it's never been more important to understand what they do and how students can get involved. This piece was produced and edited by youth media producer Becky Wandel. #AmericanRescuePlan #BacktoSchool #SchoolBoards
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As part of our partnership, Student Reporting Labs will build educational resources to help teach young people how to have conversations about misinformation with older family members and friends. The hope is that new audiences, and those already familiar with PBS NewsHour and local public media station partners, will come together to help tackle misinformation.

“Through storytelling and co-production with students, we’ll explore the media literacy needs of different communities and generations, and how they can connect with each other to find solutions,” says SRL Founder Leah Clapman.

Expanding to rural communities with News Literacy Project

Through online classes, events and in-person visits to schools, the News Literacy Project (NLP) provides media literacy education to students, educators and the public. More than 300,000 students have completed lessons on NLP’s virtual classroom platform, Checkology, since its launch in 2016.

The Google News Initiative’s partnership will help the NLP bring their Newsroom to Classroom program to even more journalists and educators. NLP is now expanding into rural areas of California, Colorado, Texas, Iowa and Nebraska — places hit particularly hard by the decline in local news.

“News literacy is an essential skill for everyone everywhere in a healthy democracy,” Claudia Borgelt, Vice President of Development at NLP says. “Access to news literacy education should not be limited by a community’s zip code.”

Expanding Spanish-language resources with Poynter’s MediaWise

Our efforts extend beyond students and educators. The GNI was the original supporter of Poynter’s MediaWise project, which was initially focused on students and has since expanded to seniors. Launched in 2020, the MediaWise for Seniors program has trained more than half a million Americans to date.

We’re joining forces with the team again to translate their “How to Spot Misinformation Online” course into Spanish, and create a text-based version of the course that will be delivered via SMS, which is how many seniors find and share news.

Two mobile phones side by side. Both are showing a text message of paragraphs in Spanish, including various emojis like fire alarms and smiley faces.

“More than 41 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home,” says MediaWise Director Katy Byron. “Research shows that health and vaccine-related falsehoods and conspiracy theories are some of the most pervasive forms of misinformation targeting Hispanic communities. Making these Spanish-language educational resources available in multiple formats, on platforms popular with the 50+ Hispanic population, will help combat the Spanish language misinformation gap.”

Teaser trailer for an upcoming television segment on Telemundo about the new MediaWise project.
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These partnerships build on Google’s other media literacy efforts around the world, including a €25 million contribution to the European Media and Information Fund. Along with products like Fact Check Explorer and the “about this result” feature in Search, Google is committed to equipping people with the skills they need to stop the spread of misinformation and sort fact from fiction online.

This Code Next student is paying it forward

As part of Google’s Code Next program, which brings computer science (CS) education to underrepresented communities in tech, student Gideon Buddenhagen took on a research project that would make a big impact. Through his research, he found that young students of color without financial resources don’t have the same access to technology, computer science education and mentors who look like them — opportunities that had a meaningful effect on Gideon’s own life. So for his final project with Code Next, Gideon is introducing technical education to middle school students and helping them see the many doors tech can open for them.

“I wanted to offer opportunities to learn about computer science as a pathway out of poverty and show these students cool, smart role models who look like them,” Gideon said.

Leadership in Motion is a free program Gideon designed to expose middle school students in underrepresented communities to the field of technology through mentorship from diverse high school students who have participated in Code Next. This not only gives younger students access to tech education, it also provides high school students with leadership opportunities.

Gideon collaborated with his Code Next mentors and partnered with Bridge the Gap College Prep, a nonprofit serving low-income youth, to launch a nine-week pilot of Leadership in Motion in early October. Fifteen students signed up for the pilot session, taught by four high school student engineers, and Gideon and his partners plan to scale the program to more participants soon.

Gideon knows firsthand that initiatives like Code Next and other CS programs at Google can be transformative. And with Leadership in Motion, Gideon is opening new pathways for younger students — helping them learn about technology, grow their tech networks and explore exciting possibilities for their futures.

To learn more about Code Next or if you know a student who should apply for the program, sign up for updates.

Igniting a spark for Computer Science Education Week

I feel extremely lucky. My job at Google is to find and support the next generation of Black, Latino and Indigenous leaders with a passion for computer science (CS). As a Black woman, this role has a deep meaning for me. In fact, it’s the job I’ve always dreamed of — one that bridges my passion for computer science and equity. And, I get to work with people who look like me.

But it wasn’t always this way. When I started my first tech job after graduate school, I started asking questions that would change the course of my career. Where would I get career guidance as a Black woman? How would I navigate a computer science education alone?

These questions ignited a spark in me. I realized I wanted to help students from historically marginalized groups who, like me, were interested in computer science. And now, I get to do that every day.

Shameeka is wearing black glasses and a gray shirt, and smiling at the camera. We can see her from the shoulders up, as she is sitting in front of a laptop covered in colorful stickers. Behind Shameeka is a window with brown shades.

My experience, however, is the exception rather than the rule. Most young people, especially those from underrepresented communities, aren’t exposed to CS concepts in school. In addition, and perhaps maybe even more concerning, many Black, Hispanic and female students don’t believe that CS skills will benefit them.

For this year’s Computer Science Education Week — happening December 6-12 — Google is helping students from all backgrounds explore computer science. Educators can bring Hour of CodeTM activities from Google’s CS programs into their classrooms, or join livestream events with Googlers who have CS backgrounds. Educators in Title 1-funded schools can also virtually host a Google volunteer in their classroom to lead an Hour of Code activity or career chat. Find out more and sign up on Code with Google’s CSEdWeek page.

These initiatives are a part of Google’s larger commitment to try and help every student explore the potential paths computer science can offer them. Since 2013, Google.org has given more than $80 million to organizations around the globe working to increase access to high-quality CS learning opportunities. Code with Google has also launched K-12, higher education, research, and mentorship programs to help students along their entire CS education journey.

My own journey has had a lot of bumps, twists, and turns, but each of them led me to the career I have (and love) today. I hope that hearing about others’ experiences will light a similar spark for students from all backgrounds, and inspire them to explore all of the different doors computer science can open for them.