Welcome to the December issue of the Google for Education newsletter. For all those celebrating, we wish you a happy holidays. | | |
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|  | This Just In |
|  | | Computer Science Education Week Wrap-up | | CS EdWeek may be over, but here are some tips you can share with parents to keep the learning going. | | Google Santa Tracker | | Explore, play and learn with Santa's elves with the Google Santa Tracker. You'll find lessons, code challenges and interactive games to share with your students. | | Google Trends & Hanukkah | | Celebrate the festival of lights with Google Trends Hanukkah trivia. See if you can guess the most searched Hanukkah recipe or the major city that has the most Hanukkah-related searches. You can even spin the dreidel in a Google search. |
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|  | Student Spotlight |
| | A Coding Journey | | Hania Guiagoussou, a junior attending Dublin High School in California, shared her perspectives on computer science in education. In a blog post last week she said, "What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the term "coding"? Is it "geek", "weird", "boring", or "complex"? If you came up with anything similar, chances are you are just like me before I started programming." Hania's views changed after she attended a Java programming workshop for kids. Using an animation tool, she said she "still felt like an artist, applying my imagination to a screen instead of paper. After the workshop I fell in love with coding and began to program animations for school projects and for fun." Hania has now made it her mission to help young girls see the potential of programming in their own lives. |  | Hania at work on her Rasberry Pi / Java-based WaterSaver project |
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|  | Teacher's Tools |
|  Veritasium - Check out this channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, demos and discussions about everything science. |  Crash Course Biology - Tune into this playlist to learn about Biology topics like natural selection, photosynthesis and more. This is a series of quick, 10 minute clips by Hank Green. | 
Socrative - Engage, assess and personalize your class with the Socrative Chrome app, which lets teachers quiz and poll their students. | 
Faster grading with Google Classroom - Save time with new features like keyboard shortcuts, sorting by student name, and the ability to export grades to Google Sheets. | 
Boomwriter - Help your students develop & enhance their writing, reading and peer assessment skills. | 
Haiku Learning - Get up and running with digital learning in minutes with Haiku Learning's full suite of cloud-based tools.
|  Flubaroo update - Share grades via Google Drive and print hard-copies with a new Flubaroo feature. This is great for schools with student email turned off, and for younger grades especially.
|  CS EdWeek resources - Keep practicing with more resources from CS First, coding challenges and demos. Play through the Star Wars hour of code, or work the levels in Inside Out with Made with Code.
| | Venture a little closer to the North Pole: | Visit the polar bear capital of the world Take a Google Street View trek with your students to Churchill, Canada. This quiet town, set on the shores of western Hudson Bay, is a place where polar bears and humans coexist. |
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|  | Administrator's Corner |
| | Drive / Data access available on OU level - You can now set different Google Drive sharing permissions based on organizational units (OUs). This means that you can grant different permissions to a teacher OU than you do for a student OU, for example. Learn more. | | Facts about student privacy - In a recent blog post we provided some important facts about how our products work, how we keep students' data private and secure, and our commitment to schools generally. |
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|  | Save the Date |
| Dec 23 & Jan 15
| Deadline to apply for conference & travel grants | We're trying to break down the barriers that prevent some from attending leading tech conferences. Learn more about the Google Travel and Conference Grants for selected conferences in CS and related fields. |
| Jan 12 - 15
| | | We'll be at Booth #2123 in the Expo Hall to chat, answer questions, and give demos. See you in Orlando! |
| | Jan 25 | | Google Code-in deadline | | Deadline for students to submit work for Google Code-In, the online coding challenge. |
| Jan 26 | Webinar: Administering Student Assessments with Chromebooks | Join us for a webinar where we'll talk about the different ways tests can be administered, as well as how Arcadia Unified successfully ran their online exams. |
| Jan 28 | Webinar: Kick off 2016 with Google for Education | Kick off the new year with this webinar. You'll learn about product updates and plans for 2016. |
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| | RECESS | A little help with last-minute gifts
Check out this series of map hacks that can help you save time this holiday season, brought to you from our friends on the Google Maps team.
| | P.S. Don't forget to check out... | Lightsaber Escape | In honor of the new Star Wars film opening this week, we thought you'd enjoy this interactive Chrome Experiment. Bring your smartphone along to jump into some of the lightsaber action. |
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