As one of the world’s premier companies, Google has truly affected the way everyone accesses information and how people learn online. To further encourage and nurture the leaders of tomorrow, Google has created many different educational programs for all ages. Educational programs at Google are not just informative. They also provide funding for underprivileged and minority students who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to study computer science. This gives so many young students the ambition and dream to pursue a potential career in the burgeoning field of computer science.
These wonderful and innovative programs from Google have been gathered for your convenience in this list to see for yourself which programs would be most suitable for you.
Rise Awards
The Roots in Science and Engineering (RISE) Awards from Google are given to nonprofit organizations aimed at the education of students from elementary school to university levels in technology, science, math, and engineering. After the organizations receive the money, they are obligated to reinvest it into their communities. Nonprofits from all over the world have already entered with awards ranging from €1,000 to €25,000. In the past three years, over 75 nonprofits have already won.
Doodle 4 Google
This is a great competition for school-age children that gets their creative juices flowing. To participate, K-12 students create an innovative new design that can be potentially used on Google’s homepage. After a student’s design has been chosen to be used, the student receives scholarship money and their school is awarded monetary grants. Themes are given to the participants like “what the future will look like.”
Google Code-In
Google’s annual Code-In is a programming competition targeting at 13-17 year old kids still enrolled in school. During the competition, the participants must finish complicated programming tasks, write code, keep documentation of their work, conduct individual research, and do outreach. The preliminary round winners are given t-shirts and certificates of completion and the top 10 participants go to Mountain View, California, for a tour of Google’s headquarters. This competition serves to give students a taste of what it’s like to work in the computer science field and to convince them to study computer science at the collegiate level. One past participant was grateful for the program since it required more and challenged him intellectually.
LEAD for Computer Science
Google’s Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) program’s purpose is to help ambitious and intelligent Latino, Native American, and African American high school students discover careers in computer science. Students live in college campus dorms in the summer so they can get a feel of what life at college is really be like. Stanford hosts the one-week Level 1 Section for 9th grade high school students and UC Berkeley and the University of Virginia host a three-week Level 2 Section program for high school sophomores and seniors. Moreover, the programs have current minority computer science major at these programs to provide guidance to all the participants. The students go on tours, attend lectures sponsored by Google, and acquire more computer science skills than they arrived with. The program is also available with full and partial scholarships.
Android Camp
Because Android has become one of the most popular mobile platforms, Google has created Android Camp. At this gathering, college underclassmen strengthen publishing, developing, and software testing skills in addition to learning more about developing Android apps. Android Camp is held at Google Headquarters located in Mountain View, California, and is completely free for all participating students.
Google Faculty Institute
The purpose of this 3-day summit is to give professors and teachers the tools they need to use technology more effectively in the classroom and in the lecture hall. Participants learn about how Google’s technology can positively impact how well students learn their class or course material. The educators go to lectures led by other professors, hear about different presented case studies from California teachers, write essays and participate in tech-education workshops.
Geo Teachers Institute
The Geo Teachers Institute is designed as a training seminar for teachers who are interested in utilizing Google’s Geo Technologies with their students. To further increase its effectiveness, Google has teamed up with the University of Southern Maine at Lewiston-Auburn College and National Geographic to give the seminars in Maine and in Washington DC. Each participant learns how both Sketch Up and Google Earth are there to improve their students’ educational experience.
Google Research Awards, Faculty Program, Visiting Faculty
Google Research Awards are given to professors and graduate students conducting phenomenal research that is relevant to the company’s mission. The Fellowship Program is designed to award and support graduate students for their commendable computer science work. The 12 fellowships are within various technological areas like computer security, speech tech, and machine learning. For more experienced academics, the Visiting Faculty Program awards outstanding professors the chance to work at Google for up to one year. During their time at Google, the faculty members work on research problems that Google has been having difficulty with in addition to working with the expansive amount of data available at their headquarters. Moreover, each faculty member learns more about computer infrastructure and has the opportunity to present their groundbreaking research to over a million of Google’s worldwide viewers.
Online Marketing Challenge
The Online Marketing Challenge is designed to encourage professor-student collaboration in the field of online marketing. To participate, professors gather undergraduate students to form teams so they can develop together a strategy in online advertising for a nonprofit organization or business using only $250. This international competition is designed to raise substantial money for non-government organizations (NGOs). Each winning team becomes eligible to receive a Social Impact Award that carries prize money of $15,000 or more that must be donated to the NGO they created the online campaign for.
The awards and educational programs sponsored by Google motivate people from every educational level to become enthusiastic about science and technology. Each program or competition gives students and faculty both the opportunity to become more involved with computer technology and to make a positive impact on the world. Without such wonderful opportunities, educators and students may not live up to their true potential if these programs and competitions ceased to exist. Google has the power to change lives via technology education and limitless computer science possibilities.
