Student Window

We’re excited to announce the launch of Google Sites site templates. Site templates are pre-packaged sites that anyone can use to make creating your own website even easier. This is especially valuable for students so that when you’re making your site you can now skip a few steps, and instead of making a site from scratch, start with a template. You can use site templates to organize, publish and share information about your school, class, projects, fraternity or sorority, school club, intramural teams, or any other organization or event. Additionally if you create a site that you think others might like or use, you can create a template and add it to the gallery! To browse site templates click the Create new site button. You can choose one of the popular templates highlighted on the site creation page, or you can click Browse the gallery for more to see more options. Visit www.sites.google.com to start using site templates today! Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Sites Team

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Introducing Google Sites templates

[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

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Driving the Solar System with Google

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!

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Get your campus featured in Street View on Google Maps

(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] T h e o ther 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

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Day in the life of a Docs student

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

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Google Calendar makes it easier to root for your teams

Google Checkout is happy to announce our Back-to-School promotion. Starting today through September 1, enjoy $5, $10, or $20 off your school necessities from hundreds of participating merchants. You can visit the Back-to-School promotion page , where you will find special offers from participating merchants and suggested products to help you stay ahead of the curve this fall. You can also search for your favorite back to school items on Google.com and look for one of the Google Checkout promotion badges. School shopping has never been easier with Google Checkout to help save you time and money! Posted by Anjali Vaidya, Associate Product Marketing Manager Google Checkout

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Save on school gear when you shop with Google Checkout

It’s graduation season, so congratulations to those who’ve walked down the aisle recently, donning cap and gown! To help you with your transition from college life to “the real world,” we’re using our usual Friday series to bring you some Google tips geared towards graduating students. The following is just one in a series of posts we’ll be doing every Friday throughout the summer, so stay tuned for more tips ! If you’re a part of the class of ‘09, you’re likely leaving behind a lot of great college memories and taking with you a new alumni email. So we want to remind you of a few Gmail tips that should help you get the most out of this new address. Set up mail forwarding or fetching Instead of checking a separate account for emails sent to your alumni address, have all your messages appear in your Gmail inbox. You can either set up mail forwarding from inside your alumni account for all new messages, or use Gmail’s Mail Fetcher to have all messages (old and new) automatically downloaded to your Gmail inbox. Learn more about both options . Send ‘From:’ your alumni address If you still want to show your school pride, you can add a custom ‘From:’ address to your Gmail account that lets you list your alumni address as the sender for outgoing emails. Learn to set up a custom ‘From’ address . For more Apps news Did you know that Gmail is just one of several products in Google Apps? To get updates and news on all the Apps products, check out the Google Apps Blog ! Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Introducing our Grad Tips series: Make the most of your new alumni email address

It’s Friday and you know what that means… another “App to School” video in our weekly series. This week an Electrical Engineering student at Arizona State University discusses how he uses Google Calendar and Google Talk on campus: If you have your own story to share about using Google Apps on campus, please upload your video as a response to any of ours – which you can see by visiting our playlist . If you’re not using Apps on campus yet, check out some of the things you can do by visiting www.google.com/apps/students . Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Team

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Calendar and Talk to get things done