Google held its annual developer conference this week, and during Wednesday’s keynote, the company touted its work in education, including the growing adoption of Google Apps for Education (some 25+ million users worldwide) and Chromebooks (engineering exec Chris Yerga highlighted its recent country-wide implementation in Malaysia ).The new news: Google also unveiled plans for a new education-focused section of its Android app store, “Google Play for Education.”
The store, which will launch this fall, will allow schools to search for education apps by subject matter and by grade level. Applications are open now (that's why Google announces these sorts of things at a developer event), and Google says that the apps submitted to the store will be reviewed and recommended by educators, who will help to categorize and align them with the Common Core State Standards.
The new app store will accept purchase orders as well as other payment methods, and Google says that distribution of content onto devices will be wireless (as opposed to the still sadly commonplace hardwired syncing), sending apps, books, and YouTube videos “to individuals or groups of any size, across classrooms, schools, or even districts.” Simplified device management is a big deal, enough for Free Technology for Teachers' writer and educator Richard Byrne to suggest that the new offering"promises what we've been waiting for."
Google Versus
Cue the technology bloggers’ hyperbolic excitement: “Google Play for Education could kill the iPad in schools,” predicts VentureBeat . “WithGoogle Play For Education, Google Looks to Challenge Apple’s Dominance in the Classroom,” according to Techcrunch .
It’s a predictable response, no doubt, with a twist of irony too considering that Google CEO Larry Page lamented during his Q&A session at the end of Wednesday’s keynote that these sorts of headlines have become commonplace. Page argued that the technology press always (and as he tried to insist, unnecessarily) frames Google as “ versus ” someone else.
Every story I read about Google is “us versus some other company” or somestupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there.
Let’s be honest though. It is impossible not to view Google’s education products (heck, a lot of its products) as anything but a move “against” others. Google Apps for Education versus Microsoft’s Office and the (now rebranded) Live@edu, for example. And now Google Play for Education versus the Apple App Store.
The tech blogs might hail Apple as the“ de facto leader in the education space” (I do believe Pearson remains the largest education company in the world, but hey, what do I know) whichin turn must mean that Google is moving “against” Apple with its Play for Education; but there are lots of other products, services, policies, and companies that Google is positioned “versus” here as well:
*. Google Play for Education versus News Corp’s Amplify tablet , which like many non-Apple mobile devices, is running a customized version of Android.
*. Google Play for Education versus “Whispercast,” Amazon's recently-launched wireless (Kindle/Android) e-book and app deployment tool forschools.
*. [Android] Tablets versus laptops (or,heck, even Google’s own Chromebooks)
*. Google versus COPPA . Google versus the
Web.
Google Versus the Open Web
When I attended Google IO last year, I wrote about my interpretation of the company’s education plans as a response in part to Inside Higher Ed Joshua Kim’s complaint that Google hadn’t made any education-related announcements at its developer conference, particularly as it unveiled a new Android tablet – the Nexus 7.
And while sales numbers might say one thing, it's still an open question whether tablets are really the best computing devices for students, particularly those in middle school and up, who need (if nothing else) keyboards. Yes, tablets are cheaper than laptops. Yes, there are lots of fun and exciting apps. Yes, tablets offer digital texrtbooks with touchscreen page-turning and embeeded videos. Woo. Hoo. Tablets facilitate consumption and content delivery, but they haven’t really changed the way we teach and learn. They are not the powerful computing devices as envisioned by Seymour Papert et al. And with their emphasis on app marketplaces and app ecosystems and not on openly-licensed content the World Wide Web, tablets raise all sorts of other problems for education.
