Without an IT staff, a school in Mexico goes fully digital with Google Apps for Education and Classroom

At a Glance Colegio Banting • Private schools serving 650 students • Serves low to middle income students • Google Apps for Education user since 2013 • Google Classroom user since 2014 Goals • Increase student interaction in assignments and team projects • Improve communication channels among students, teachers, parents and administrators • Increase students’ technology knowledge while boosting scores • Help teachers improve students’ learning experience and stay organized Approach • Google Apps help students improve typing and technology skills • Google Classroom makes it easier to assign homework, helping teachers and parents keep track of student work and progress. • Students have embraced Google Apps and become interested in other technologies along the way in their pursuit of education

Institution Centro de Formación Escolar Banting, also known as Colegio Banting, consists of two private schools in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Casa Banting serves preschool students up to five years old and Colegio Banting students range from kindergarten to 12th grade. Since the schools opened in 1994 with just 5 pupils, the Colegio Banting has grown to 650 students, primarily from lower and middle income families. Founded with the mission to “ensure a comprehensive learning experience,” Colegio Banting aims to “prepare students to meet the demands and opportunities of the 21st century,” in part through a strong emphasis on incorporating technology into learning. Challenge Colegio Banting faced the challenge of preparing students from all walks of life – many lacking the means to pay for an education – to compete for entry into the best universities in the world. They needed to level the playing field by using the best technology at the lowest price to improve education and increase students’ academic achievement. The school’s vision involves equipping students with the best tools, materials and technology to prepare them for success. However, prior to adopting Google Apps in 2013, Colegio Banting had no formal IT system. Students didn’t even have email, and their teachers couldn’t reach them outside of school hours. Faculty and staff were using their personal email addresses. And because of the decentralized system, communication between the preschool and K-12 school was limited. Colegio Banting needed a single platform that would allow students, teachers, parents and administrators to easily access shared information – on campus and beyond. In doing so, they would improve students’ access to learning and help familiarize them with technology, even if they didn’t have access to a computer at home. They needed a minimal amount of IT management because the school lacked resources to spend on staffing for educational technology.

“I’m very happy that we’ve invested in Apps for Education, and with the continual updates that Google makes to the product it makes it even better for us.” —David Medel, CEO, Colegio Banting

Solution Colegio Banting decided to go with Google Apps for Education so that it could centralize lessons, assignments and announcements in one online environment, accessible from anywhere

About Google Apps for Education A free suite of communication and collaboration tools – including Gmail, Classroom, Docs and Drive – for learning anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Classroom: A tool within the Google Apps for Education suite that allows educators to easily create, review, and organize assignments, as well as communicate directly with students. Chromebooks: A range of fast, affordable devices that update automatically, and are easy for schools to set up and manage. Android: A variety of affordable tablets that are easy for schools to set up and manage, and designed for students to share. Google Play for Education: A content store built just for schools, so teachers can get the right apps, books, and videos to the right students, right away.

For more information visit www.google.com/edu/apps

“We settled on using free Google Gmail accounts at first and got a taste of what the power of the cloud-based apps could bring to our schools in terms of how efficiently we were working together,” says Medel. “We eventually decided to use Google for our email domains and Google Apps for Education because of how well Google’s services were working in our schools already.” In 2014, Colegio Banting began using Google Classroom as a virtual class to help students, teachers and parents keep track of homework assignments and announcements in a simple-to-use dashboard. Classroom replaces paper handouts and chalkboard-written explanations on due dates and other details. Now, there’s little room for confusion. Students can look on the assignment page in Classroom to find all their work, and receive an email notification when a teacher has posted a new assignment. In addition to helping teachers assign homework, keep track of who turned in their work and share comments and grades with students, Classroom also helps teachers to enrich their lessons. They can share various forms of media, such as YouTube videos, PDF files or other links, all stored in Drive and shared via Classroom. Teachers can also see how many students turned in their homework and easily grade assignments. “There’s now a lot more digital material to make the curriculum more engaging than what we had in the past,” says Medel. Benefits Google Classroom and Apps for Education offer a new level of transparency and collaboration between students, parents, teachers and administrators Colegio Banting now uses Drive as its central hub for all of the school’s information, including lunch menus, course descriptions and class materials shared in Sheets, Docs, Slides and other, non-Google file types. Students work more closely together than ever before with Apps. Students invite other students into Docs they are working on to get help. Students also go on Gmail, chat and Hangouts to discuss class assignments and group projects as they simultaneously work on in Docs. Teachers, notified when homework is completed, can see who did what and at what time. Students are more excited about learning and are performing better on standardized tests. “Before Google Apps, we didn’t have any technology at the school to help the students. We were looking at Microsoft’s predecessor to Office 365 and it quickly became apparent that Google Apps was far more intuitive to use – and it was free,” says Medel. “There was a ton of cost-savings of going with Google versus Microsoft so the decision was easy for us to make.” “I’m very happy that we’ve invested in Apps for Education and Google Classroom and with the continual updates that Google makes to the products it makes these even better for us,” says Medel. Because of the great results Colegio Banting has seen with Google Apps, they plan to create a technologypowered learning room at the school with Chromebooks and large screens to empower new ideas.

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