Category: google

Google Teacher Academy application

Posted on by John McLear


What is Google Teacher Academy?

The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies… Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other primary and secondary educators in their local region.

Why am I applying?

I’m not doing this for the badge, in fact the thought of Google needing to put a stamp of approval on my work as an Educator is cringe worthy.  The same feeling applies to all big brands, be it Apple, Microsoft etc.  A teacher can be a fantastic teacher without any badge or sign of approval, just ask their pupils.

Most of my job is listening to teachers and educators, trying to understand how they want to use ICT to deliver the curriculum. I feel like GTA should be a great opportunity to meet other people that have a similar role as myself and hopefully share some of my experiences and best practices that I have discovered over the years.

What I hope to gain from GTA

I hope that the users of safe search will benefit from increased confidence in knowing that I have been on the course.  Safe Search is built on Google Custom Search engine technology so it would be good for me to get some more contacts, feedback and support with delivering a service that thousands of people use every hour.  The same applies for the work I do around GTalk, App Engine and Etherpad.  I work with about 100 local schools in Bradford promoting web2 so I’m sure I will be able to share some of the experiences I hope to learn at GTA.  I especially want to ask what the Google Apps team thoughts on free office WApps 2010 are, how the two products compare.

UPDATE: 25th of June 2010 – My application was unsuccessful.  d’oh – I hope that doesn’t put any one off applying to GTA in the future!

Google’s “Learning platform” clarified

Posted on by John McLear

Google rely heavily on people talking about their products and brands for free promotion but Cloudcourse was just an example of the consumer and the provider getting it horribly wrong.

Initially Cloudcourse wasn’t even designed for Schools as Irwin from the Cloudcourse team explains:

We actually didn’t design this system with schools in mind — we designed it as a course scheduling tool for enterprises. Nevertheless, CloudCourse can certainly help school teachers, who most likely don’t have the time or resources to worry about hardware hosting and dealing with traffic bursts like the ones that occur during class enrollment periods. We’d love to see schools/universities pick up this platform and code additional features on top of it to make it more relevant to the education ecosystem.

However several blogs released statements saying how Google have entered into the Learning platform market and the disruption it would cause..  I asked Irwin to clarify if Cloudcourse was a learning platform:

CloudCourse certainly is a tool today, and not a ‘learning platform’ as compared to other offerings which are branded ‘learning platforms’.

So that clears that up, thanks to Irwin for the clarification.  My recommend to those who jumped on the bandwagon based on this poor press release from Google is to fact check before posting and even to download the software or try out this hosted solution for you.  I have also asked Google to research their language used in Educational press releases/blog posts prior to clicking the Publish button.  There is a massive array of EdTech people on various social networks they could leverage to proof read/fact check these documents.

One last thing while we’re on the topic of Cloudcourse. Cloudcourse runs on Google App Engine which requires a “non open source” database so while the code may be open source, it’s not as if you can download the software and install it anywhere for free, and that is a shame.  Kudos for Google for releasing the CloudCourse platform open source although it really doesn’t compete with any of the current contenders in the market.

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Google Cloudcourse is not a learning platform

Posted on by primaryt

"CloudCourse is a course scheduling system. ” — Google Code.

Not a learning platform.  (as claimed by this post)

C’mon people, just because something is a web based tool that can be used WITHIN a learning platform doesn’t mean it IS a learning platform.  Educators are already confused enough with companies offering them learning platforms that don’t do what a learning platform should do according to Becta(RIP) and Wikipedia.

Obviously a lot of people are still confused to what is a learning platform.  I recommend you watch this video.

There is a live version of cloudcourse for YOU TO PLAY WITH here.

It is pretty much irrelevant for Primary Schools, I will try to find a creative way to use it in a primary but don’t hold your breath…

I am waiting on a call/email from Irwin(from the CloudCourse team) who will hopefully disagree with me and prove me wrong.

Does Cloudcourse compete with Frog, Moodle & other learning platforms?  No.

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Has Google’s size started working against it?

Posted on by primaryt
Image representing Google Talk as depicted in ...

Google Talk Chat Back badge has been broken since May the 22nd and no one at Google has even aknowledged the problem. Does no one at Google know who is responsible to fix this? The problem is all over the forum. It is obvious that someone has done a “fix” that has broken this function but 4 days to roll back some code seems a bit excessive.. Maybe it was a security issue? Google have to play the transparent, open roll here or I, amongst others will begin looking elsewhere.

Update: Fixed on the 28th of May. – no mention from Google about what happened.

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Android gets turn-by-turn based navigation

Posted on by primaryt

android_man_kicking_appleSo, this might initially be a very “educationally focused” post but you have to read between the lines to understand the significance of this (even though it was somewhat inevitable) announcement.

Basically turn-by-turn is that lovely lady who tells you to “turn left in 20 meters”.  We all knew it was coming to the UK but companies such as Jarmin & Tomtom have been trying to stop it.  That is because they have made absolute packets of money by selling their app to iPhone fanbois and girls alike.

This may be the final blow android needed to really knock the Apple iPhone OS off it’s #1 mantel.  How does this affect education you may be asking?  Simple, a consumer based demand of Android handsets is inevitable now that your phone now replaces your usual Sat Nav product, and lets face it.  Google will do some crazy cool stuff with turn-by-turn based navigation, already boasting an incredibly smart caching system that caches your trip so if you lose Internet connectivity you don’t lose your map or location.

As android becomes more popular and more schools grow sto adopt the platform it means less iPhone applications will be developed and more Android developers will pop up.  Is this a good thing?  Surely iPhone apps are better than Android apps?  Yes it is a good thing.  Android promotes open source and a large majority of the applications available in the market place are completely free.

So today’s  announcement might not have a direct impact on Android in Education but the knock on effect should be huge and the future certainly looks bright the little green operating system and it’s place in the UK market.

As a side note its worth mentioning that most of the popular netbooks/tablets will soon run Android (including devices such as the Asus EEE)

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