Hi, my name is Pratip Banerji.
I'm a product manager on the Google Play for Education team.
I'm excited to be here today to talk
to you about Google Play for Education.
What we've launched, why we launched it,
and what we're launching new this summer.
So just to start off, when we built
Google Play for Education, we went out
and we talked with a bunch of educators
to really get a good sense for the challenges
that they faced with deploying technology in the classroom.
And what we heard from them was four things.
First, we heard they really wanted an affordable choice
of devices to use in the classroom.
They wanted devices at different price points,
with different sets of features, with different form factors.
Second, we heard that IT departments really
wanted a solution that scales.
They wanted a solution that made it easy to provision tablets.
They wanted a solution that made it
easy to manage those tablets once they were provisioned.
They wanted all this in an environment
that was safe and secure for student use in the classroom.
Third, educators told us that they really
wanted to get tools that empower teachers.
Teachers are close to students.
They see where they're struggling.
They see where they're succeeding.
Teachers want to be able to find the content that they need
and actually manage which things go out to students.
And last, we heard educators wanted
a broad set of digital content available at their fingertips,
ranging from apps to books to videos that they actually
controlled and were able to push out
to students when they needed it.
So I'm going to walk through each of these areas
and talk a bit about what we've done
to solve some of these problems.
So with Google Play for Education,
we've made available a broad set of Android devices.
Today, we've actually got a seven inch Nexus tablet that's
available for schools, as well as
a Samsung Galaxy Tab for education.
We've also announced that we're rolling out
an ASUS Transformer, as well as an HP Slate 8 Pro.
What this means is that schools can actually
choose from many different types of tablets.
And when they buy one of these tablets,
they know it's going to work within the classroom
environment, and they know it's going
to work with Google Play for Education.
Once you buy one of these tablets,
how do you actually get it working
in a classroom environment?
Many of you have set up Android tablets,
and you know that it's multi-step.
So you have to add a Wi-Fi configuration.
You' actually have to set up a username and password.
You have to go and download device policy.
And then you have to download apps
that you want to use on your tablet.
This is fine if you're setting up a couple of tablets.
But once you're an IT administrator that's
trying to do this for 5,000 tablets across the district,
it actually gets pretty cumbersome.
So we built is this device activation and set up tool.
So an admin downloads this tool onto their device.
And then all they need to do is NFC bump every other tablet
with this admin tablet.
And those tablets automatically start
setting up Wi-Fi, adding a student profile with a username
and password, downloading device policy,
and downloading any apps that need
to be pre-installed on that device.
So then that tablet can be just handed to a student.
So what this means is instead of taking days or weeks to set up
a district of tablets, you could do that in a matter of hours.
So once one of these tablets is set up,
how does an educator actually find content for use
on that tablet?
So with Google Play for Education,
what we built is a new set of search filters and browse
filters that let educators find apps that
align with specific subjects, that align with specific grade
levels, that actually can align with
specific common core curriculum standards as well if
applicable.
And the way we do this is that we allow developers
to opt into Google Play for Education.
And then any app that's opted in goes to a third party network
of teachers that review the app, make sure
that the app works well in a classroom environment,
and assign metadata to that app that
allows for us to surface that app in the right way.
So for example, if a third grade math
teacher is looking for an app that teaches their kids how
to do multiplication, they just look for math,
they look for third grade, and they
look for a common core curriculum standard that's
going to align with multiplication.
And they're going to see every single app that
exists within the Play for Education Store that
aligns with that.
So once they've found an app, how does the teacher actually
get this app into the hands of the student?
Obviously, a teacher can use the standard distribution mechanism
of putting in a student's username and send to a student.
But the cool thing that we've done
is we've actually made the ability
to do bulk distribution by having a teacher set up
Google Groups for a classroom, for a entire grade,
or for subsets of a class.
And then when a teacher actually provisions
to one of these groups, the app is pushed out
to every single student that's in the group.
So a teacher could set up a group for basic math student
and a group for advanced math students,
find apps that make sense for each of those sets of students,
and then provision those apps directly to those students.
And those apps will just show up on the student's devices.
So with the apps that are getting pushed out,
we've also build a broad set of management tools
that really works for schools.
We heard from schools that they really
did not want to pay with credit cards.
That just didn't work with their buying process.
So we built the ability to accept purchase orders.
So the way this works is a school
sends Google a purchase order.
Google logs that purchase order.
And then schools can make purchases against that purchase
order with a balance declining.
And then on a monthly basis, we invoice a school
so that they see how much they've spent,
what they've spent it on.
The cool thing about this is that this happens completely
transparently to the developer.
The developer doesn't have to know anything
about purchase orders.
They just know that they sold a certain number of apps
and that they get a check in the mail.
We've also built tools that allow for teachers
to manage the apps are actually present on the devices.
So if a student is done with an app,
a teacher's able to use Google Play for Education
to remotely uninstall that app, either from a specific student
or from a set of students, as well as reassign that app
to another student if one student is done with it
and another student needs to use it.
So no digital content solution in the classroom
would be complete without books.
So we've actually launched a flexible rental model
that has publishers, including top textbook publishers, as
well as trade fiction publishers.
We've also made available YouTube education videos.
So YouTube has a broad set of content
that's available that works great in the classroom.
Using Google Play for Education, educators could actually
find those YouTube Edu videos, using the same search criteria
that we have for apps and provision
those videos to students as well.
So what are we launching new?
This summer, we're excited to announce
that we're expanding the availability of Play
for Education to Chromebook schools.
So for those of you that don't know,
Chromebooks are doing extremely well
in the classroom environment.
In 2013 Q4, 25% of all edu devices sold were Chromebooks.
And over 10,000 schools are using Chromebooks today
by millions of students.
So this summer, admins of Chromebook schools
are going to be able to enable Google Play for Education
on their domains, which is going to allow educators
in those domains to find the same book and video
content that Android Edu schools can find, as well as find
Chrome apps that are available in the education space.
And all this content can be provisioned and managed
using the same management tools that
are available for Android schools.
The last thing that we're launching this summer
that we're super excited to be announcing
is the ability for teachers to leave tips for other teachers.
What we've heard over and over again from teachers
is that they want to know what's working
for other teachers in the classroom.
So what we are enabling now is allowing a teacher
to actually leave a tip that talks about an app, what
the goals were when they used in the classroom, how they used it
in the classroom.
They can link to YouTube videos showing how they used it.
They can link to a curriculum or a lesson plan that
shows how it really worked in the classroom.
So then other teachers that are actually
looking for content in the classroom
can go read these tips, can learn
how this app worked for other teachers with similar profiles,
and can really make the app shine
within their classroom environment.
So what's next?
If you're an Android developer that's interested
in participating in Google Play for Education,
go to developer.android.com/edu.
There you can learn more about what
it takes to build an awesome K-12 app,
as well as understand what the processes is to opt in
to have your app included in Play for Education.
If you're a Chrome app developer,
we're not quite ready to accept your app
in Google Play for Education yet.
We're launching with a small set of developers
and a small set of apps.
But we're going to be expanding and opening
Google Play for Education up to you very soon.
Go to developer.google.com/edu if you're interested
in learning more about what it takes to build a cool app
for the classroom environment and fill out the form that lets
us notify you when we have the opt in process available.
If you're an interested Chromebook school,
please go to play.google.com/edu.
You can actually opt in to start using Google Play for Education
right away.
If you're a school that's interested in Android tablets,
check out google.com/edu/play, and you can actually learn how
to set up Android tablets within your classroom as well.
Thanks a lot and happy schooling.