Google for (Games) Educators?

Google recently announced their Google for Educators website, which is designed specifically to help educators learn how to use Google tools to enhance their classes. On the introductory page, they encourage teachers who are successful in doing so to mail the Google team with their story so that it can be featured for other teachers. They even provide links for teachers to use to share their Google tool-related class ideas with others.

It's good to see Google encouraging this kind of knowledge-sharing amongst educators. Hopefully relatively high-profile initiatives like this one will help convince educators that activities like contributing to the IGDA's games education curriculum knowledge base is a great way to help keep the ideas fresh and the challenges engaging for students.

I also thought it was a nice touch that they provide an email newsletter mailing list sign-up right on the front page, as email seems to be just in terms of meeting the technical proficiencies and interests of the average educator these days. This kind of thoughtfulness about how to effectively work together with educators is something we also strive for in the Education SIG.

Perhaps in the near future the IGDA wiki will include pages suggesting how games educators in particular can make good use of Google tools. I like the way Google took the time to write pages catered to describe the 12 featured tools in a way that's (hopefully) clear and easily understood by educators; perhaps some similar pages catered to games education on our wiki would be useful. This kind of collaboration within our community is certainly something Google would like to see in response to their announcement and something that could be richly rewarding for all those who participate.

If you have any thoughts on this or would like to contribute in any way, please feel free to just go add something to the wiki straight away, leave a comment on this post, or email us at education_sig@igda.org.

Darren Torpey
Technology Co-Officer