Google Apps for Education Summit

Photo courtesy Google

“Six months ago I was approached by some folks at Google to see if we can put together a Google Apps for Education Summit here in Honolulu,” says Brendan Brennan, teacher and researcher at University Laboratory School. “After six months of pushing, pulling and pushing some more, we finally were able to make it happen. We are very proud to announce the event, and we think it will be of great benefit to the thousands of teachers and students who are trying to leverage Google Apps in the classroom.”

The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, and representatives from the Google Apps for Education team. Topics include Deployment and Management of Google Apps; Google Apps Scripts; Google Apps for Education Certification; Chromebooks in Education; YouTube for Schools; Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Gmail power tips and more.

The sessions feature two keynote presentations and two days of informative breakouts, demonstrations and hands-on workshops led by knowledgeable professional developers. The main keynote speaker will be Dan Russell, the “Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness” at Google. All the presenters are Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, Google Employees or teachers with local success stories.

Visit hi.gafesummit.com/registration to register. Early bird registration is $249 (breakfast and lunch included), and group rates are available.

Click Chick’s Mobile App of the Week: Monkey Message

Monkey Message is another local-grown app from Tropicalapps, a Hawaii app development company. Keeping in mind our no-texting-while-driving law here, this app is designed to receive and send text messages completely hands-free through voice recognition.

When you receive a text message, Monkey Message will alert you by saying, “New Message from John. Message is ‘How is the weather?'” The app will then ask you, “Do you want to reply?” You respond by saying yes or no. Monkey then says, “Speak now.” You then speak into your phone, and once you’re finished, it asks for confirmation, and then you send it.

The app is available in 20 languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and more. Monkey will automatically translate your incoming foreign text to English. Exclusive to Android devices, Monkey Message is available in two versions on Google Play – a free trial version (10 free text messages), and the Pro version has all settings available for 99 cents. clickchick@midweek.com