Google Chromebook App Hub for Education
On March 4, 2018, Google announced their creation of the new Chromebook App Hub. The goal of this project is to help teachers, curriculum specialists, IT administrators, and EdTech developers cut back on the amount of time and effort put into getting the right apps and activities into classrooms. Teachers spend countless hours scouring the internet for ideas to bring to their students. Curriculum specialists and IT administrators spend time digging through app requests from the teachers to make sure they’re right for the learning environment and meet district requirements. EdTech developers spend time trying to get their apps in front of the teachers and help them understand how those apps could be properly utilized. The Chromebook App Hub will be an online resource dedicated to helping these groups work together to learn about the apps and activities available.
The Chromebook App Hub will be unique in how it presents its apps to educators. Google worked with different educators and resource providers to come up with what they have dubbed “idea sparks.” Idea Sparks are examples of how the apps featured in the Hub can be used in real classrooms. There will also be teaching strategies, videos, activities, and links to useful websites. All of this information concentrated in one place will make it simpler for educators to utilize apps with their students. The Hub will be a complete tool set full of the information needed to achieve student interest in these apps and activities. Kate Petty, the director of Educational Learning at EdTechTeam said, “In my experience, teachers learn about applications in two ways: learning about a new lesson idea that has the app integrated into it, or hearing about an app that sounds awesome and want to get ideas about how to use it. Idea Sparks give teachers an opportunity to learn about new idea sparks and, even better, will provide an opportunity for teachers to share what they have created.” The App Hub can be filtered and searched by a number of criteria, such as age, subject, and learning goal.
Google worked with SDCP to help developers better understand how to safeguard privacy. The Hub will be launched later in 2019. While waiting, educators can sign up to be notified when it’s available and submit Idea Sparks.
