Student Window

In case you didn’t see our announcement yesterday, Google is partnering with Virgin America to provide free WiFi on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010. Travel can be hectic during the holidays, so at least this way you can spend your time in the air staying connected to friends and family or getting some last-minute cramming in for your Chem final. You can find out more about our partnership, where Virgin America flies and how the in-flight WiFi service works at www.freeholidaywifi.com . Posted by Jeff Aguero, Product Marketing Manager

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A holiday gift from Virgin America and Google!

It’s always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of t his fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have ” gone Google ” and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using Google Apps on campus has increased by 400% . Because more schools sign up for Apps everyday, we wanted to celebrate the start of the 2009 school year by launching a new site that shows off some of these schools, provides product tips and tricks, introduces a community discussion forum and more. A snapshot of some of the thousands of schools going Google this Fall. Every location in green indicates Apps users. When you visit the site , you’ll also find an interactive map packed with interesting trivia. For example, in addition to the 70,000 students using Apps at Temple University, their 5,000 staff and faculty were given a choice between Gmail and alternative vendor, and over 90% chose to go Google. Or when Kent State first deployed, they saw more than 700 students migrating each hour. And a single admin at Montana State successfully deployed over 30,000 accounts in less than 90 days. Or as we learned in the recent webinar from another school on the map — Notre Dame — they saved $1.5 million by switching to Apps. You can hear their full story in this video: We hope more schools will continue to go Google and bring Apps to their campuses in an effort to improve communication and collaboration while cutting costs and resources. In the meantime, check out our site and find out what Apps has done for other schools and what Apps can do for your school — and if you’re already a part of the movement, add yourself to the map ! Posted by Jason Cook and Miriam Schneider, Apps Education Edition team

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Five million students going back to school are "Going Google"

Stephanie is interning with the Google Docs Marketing team this summer and surveyed students to find out about how you’re using Docs on and off campus. Last month I asked you how you use Google Docs on campus. After hearing from over 50 students, I wanted to share some highlights of what we learned from you along the way: How do students mainly use Google Docs? Brainstorming Whether it’s taking notes during a group project brainstorm session or outlining a research paper, Google Docs helps you get your thoughts down quickly and allows you to access them from anywhere later. Group work Many of you use Google Docs to contribute your part to a group project, but just as many use it outside the classroom. Student groups are collecting RSVPs with Google forms, taking meeting minutes with Google documents, and balancing budgets with Google spreadsheets. Personal record keeping Have a to-do list or want to keep a weekly budget? Many of you are using Google Docs to stay on track with daily tasks. Your favorite thing about Google Docs? Collaboration Backing up important work is great too, but far and away students enjoy being able to contribute to the same document with friends and classmates. And it’s not just about the class projects. For instance, Students for Obama used Google spreadsheets to tell each other who had participated in phone banks, who was going on certain trips, and who would complete certain tasks. Most creative uses we heard from you: “Two of my friends used Google spreadsheets to play Dungeons and Dragons with each other.” – Chris, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, Computer Science “We used Google Docs to plan a spring break trip for Habitat for Humanity. It helped us keep track of phone numbers, dinner menus, etc.” – Jacinda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science “Our club leadership used Google Docs for everything from constitution-writing to picking the new board, and during interviews, we would take notes on interviewees in the same doc.” – Justin, Harvard University, Anthropology Thanks to everyone who volunteered your time; it really helps the Google Docs team key in to what’s important to students so we can continue to make the product better for you. With back to school right around the corner, I’m interested to try out some of your ideas in my own campus life, and I hope some of these ideas may inspire you to get started with Docs as well. Posted by Stephanie Vezich, Google Marketing Intern

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The results are in – how students like you use Google Docs

In the spirit of graduation season, we’re doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors, so stay tuned for more! Whether you’re starting a new job, or traveling for a few months, or moving to a new city, you might want to keep a journal of this time in your life. Personally, I’ve been very unsuccessful with keeping journals or diaries over the years. It was always something I aspired to, but my notebooks would ultimately be full of blank pages. For a while, I tried blogging as well, but my commitment to writing daily posts waned over time. That is, until I learned a useful feature in Blogger that made documenting the day-to-day events of my life super simple. And since then, I’ve kept up with my posts for over 2 years! I essentially photo blog, meaning instead of writing lengthy text posts about my life, I just capture what goes on in pictures that I post online. What makes this process even simpler is that I’m able to take a spontaneous photo on my mobile phone, email it to my blog’s address, and have the photo published within seconds. After doing this for two years, it’s amazing to go back and look at what I took a picture of months or a year ago, and to remember what I was doing or who I was with at the exact time and moment the photo was posted to my blog. If you want to do this, here are some steps to get started: Follow the steps at www.blogger.com to create a new blog for yourself (if you don’t already have one). After you’ve created your blog, go to “Settings”. Click “Email & Mobile”. Under “Posting Options,” fill in the field to create a Blogger email address for your new blog (make sure to keep this email address secret!). Select “Publish emails immediately”. Click “Save Settings”. Now take a photo on your mobile phone, and email it to the Blogger address you created. The subject line for the email will be the post’s title, and you can include text in the body of the email that will appear along with your photo on your blog. Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Grad tip: An easy way to journal using Blogger

As we head into the NCAA final four tournament this week, it seems that March Madness is on everyone’s mind. Yet for students there is an entirely different type of madness that also shows up at this time of year, in the form of midterm or final exams. Often standing as the last obstacle before Spring Break, essay and exam deadlines are coming up at schools throughout the country. To make things a little easier, we wanted to share a few tips on how Google Book Search can help you research papers. From previewing a book to see if it’s relevant to your topic, to actually locating it in the stacks of your library, Google Book Search can be a valuable time-saver in writing papers. So check out our tips , and when you’re done with your papers, enjoy the games! Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Associate Product Marketing Manager

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Research tips to ease your March madness

But in memory of the 1989 student movement, I felt that the best thing to do is to trace back to the time as it occurred. I am sure that we will then have a discussion as to how we look at the events in Spring 1989 today. …… Basically the introduction of price discovery revealed supply and demand imbalances (as it must) with over-high demand for daily consumer goods; and dual-track pricing that was meant to dampen a sudden shock created a black market, …

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Spring 1989 in Shanghai – A Memory of the '89 Student Movement …

Where I work we call the people with the skill for making repairs and building stuff ‘craftsmen.’ We call them this because they are both crafty and manly. There is a good reason people like me are called engineers, not engineermen. Engineers are way less manly then craftsmen. We spend our days clicking away at our computers. When we are not playing fantasy basketball, blogging, or Googling, we are doing CAD drawings. We print and fold these drawings into neat, unmanly packets, which we hand off to craftsmen. The craftsmen look at these drawings while they scratch their manly, stubbled chins, wondering why in the world the engineer would draw a pipe going through a ten foot thick concrete wall. When the craftsman asks the engineer about this, the engineer insists that the concrete wall does not exist. After all, the computer does not show a concrete wall to be at that location. The craftsman shrugs, and then demolishes the wall with a large sludge hammer. As engineers we occasionally start to wish we were manlier. Sometimes we venture out to dusty construction sites with clipboards on inspections. We look inside walls and ceilings at the craftsmen’s work, pausing to take notes like “must remember to try and be manlier.” It’s unfortunate that I have been spending so much time around craftsmen, because I have constantly been faced with this same desire to be manlier. I began trying to take on some of the repairs around the house. Actually, I have learned a lot by trying to do repairs around the house. Unfortunately, the main thing I have learned (or apparently not learned) is that I should never try to do repairs around the house. About a year ago I replaced the bathtub faucet in our second bathroom. The new faucet worked great for about a year until my wife decided to use it. Now the faucet has started leaking again. I was very exited to hear about this, not only because my first repair was success for so long, but also because I get to fix it again. Tonight I’ll take out all my tools and then proceed to pull the guts out of the faucet. When I can’t see any problems, I’ll reassemble the intricate parts. Then I’ll do exactly what I did last time. I’ll spend about four hours fiddling back and forth with the faucet until I find that one elusive, perfect position where it doesn’t leak. I’ll then back away slowly, without breathing on or near the handle. I’ll strut out into the living room, wipe my sweaty brow, and tell my wife in a deep voice that it’s all fixed. She’ll ask why it took so long, and I’ll shrug off her comment by saying that she just doesn’t understand man’s work. This time it may stay fixed for two years. That is, unless my wife tries using it again. By: Michael Oakes source: http://quittingmyjobtoblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/engineerman-at-heart.htm…

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An Engineerman at Heart

This is on a new technology that I came across whiles I was browsing through some of the great works on Ted.com. The technology is called “Sixth Sense” and it consists of a camera, colored caps, a projector, a mirror and a phone. Although this is just the beta version, the device goes around the neck. This device projects information about what surrounds you over objects’ surfaces, but it’s much more than that. If you don’t have the time to watch the entire video, I say you fast-forward to 3:10, where she shows the device. The device is basically a mini-projector connected with a camera and a cell phone- which acts as a computer and your connection to all the information stored on the web. It can obey hand gestures and that’s what the colored caps are for. Just watch the video and you will understand how it works. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. This technology is too sophisticated for our time but I will love to own one. This looks like a projected and interactive HUD. I am sure most people would like it but with everyone projecting stuff everywhere, that would be annoying. If we can make stuff like this now wait till ten years down the road.

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Sixth Sense Technology