Today Google launched Google Play for Education. This is a project I have been eagerly anticipating coming out. I was very privileged to work with CUE and a team of amazing educators who have spent hours and hours reviewing apps to find apps they would recommend for fellow educators. These recommended apps have been compiled in the Google Play for Education store. What is really nice about the Google Play for Education store is the ability for teachers to push out apps to devices quickly and easily. There is no need to actually touch the student devices to send apps to them.
There are many reasons to love the Android tablets, but I love the idea of a more open market. I consider myself an open source kinda gal, I like to share. I have seen many postings on how coding is the new literacy and I am excited about how easy it is for students to create an app and get it up in the Google Play store. Students can see their work published for the world after creating an app. One tool that makes app creation easy is the MIT App Inventor. This website is coding along the lines of Scratch which is a fun program to get students started with coding. Students can use the App Inventor to build apps without having to learn lines of code, thus getting them started as app developers right away and to get them excited about CREATING.
Let’s not stop with the apps in the Google Play for Education store, start exploring Android apps yourself. Which ones do you use with your students? What apps have your students created that we as educators can support and celebrate and use in our own classrooms? Post your lesson ideas on your blog, in the comments below, on Twitter, Google Plus, Classroom 2.0 and other social places where we can all learn from each other. Check out Richard Byrne’s website: http://android4schools.com/ for lesson plans and Android app suggestions.
You can see the launch blog post here: http://goo.gl/ZuDBJ9
Articles for Nexus and Android
Touchcast by Jaime Vandergrift talking about the GPFE
2 thoughts on “Google Play For Education – Let’s Create”
Sweet!
I’ve pretty much had it trying to work iPads into our environment. In attempting to play by Apple’s rules, they are making life much more difficult for me and my teachers. If Android truly can deliver on remote delivery of apps, this will be a huge benefit to us as a district.
We have a few Samsung Galaxy Notes coming. Looking forward to giving them a try!