fidzu : Google

In 2013, we began a News Fellows program, as an investment in the next generation of digital reporters. The fellowship is an important part of the Google News Initiative's commitment to strengthen the quality of journalism and empower news organizations to make use of technology, through pairing students interested in journalism and technology with prestigious media organizations around the world.

Since its launch, the program has expanded into 12 regions with an alumni network of over 300 journalists and innovators across the world. This month, we welcomed the 2018 U.S. Google News Initiative Fellows to Mountain View ahead of their summer fellowships at journalism nonprofits across the country:

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  Yan Wu, Northeastern University, Center for Investigative Reporting. Yan Wu is a designer and coder turned interactive storyteller. As a graphic intern at The Boston Globe, she had not only worked on projects like 11 months, 1 president, 2471 tweets independently, but also collaborated with the Pulitzer prize winning Spotlight team and other developers on the race series.

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  Julie Christie, Temple University, Investigative Reporters & Editors. Julie Christie is almost a senior at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication, where she's studying journalism. She's currently the Enterprise Editor at The Temple News, the university's independent student newspaper.

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  Marlee Baldridge, University of Missouri, Nieman Journalism Lab. Marlee is a senior studying entrepreneurial journalism at the University of Missouri. A native of Harrisburg, Missouri (population 289), she joined the inaugural Potter Digital Ambassador program and helped integrate sustainable video and social strategies into the reporting of a rural Missouri newspaper

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  Pankhuri Kumar, Columbia University, Pew. Pankhuri is currently completing a dual degree in Journalism and CS at Columbia University. With a math and CS background, she hopes to pursue a career in interactive and computational journalism.

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  Taylor Blatchford, University of Missouri, Poynter. Taylor Blatchford graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in investigative and international journalism. She leads a team focused on bringing community engagement into the reporting process at the Columbia Missourian, a daily city newspaper.

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  Riley Wong, University of Pennsylvania,ProPublica. Riley Wong conducts machine learning and data science research for healthcare. They graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 in computer science. Their passions include social impact, QTPOC community building, music, and art.

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  Corinne Osnos, Northwestern University, Matter. Corinne is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied media innovation and entrepreneurship. As a research assistant for The Membership Puzzle Project, Corinne performed UX research on public radio sites and is now conducting qualitative research on Burning Man.

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  Erin McAweeney, University of Washington-Seattle,Witness. Erin is a researcher and technologist working in data journalism, information ethics, and algorithmic bias. In her undergrad she was an editor for a non-profit street paper that provided employment and an outlet for the marginalized homeless population in her community.

Each week, we take a look at the top trending topics in Search for a sense of what the world is thinking about. Here's a look at a few of the trending searches this week-some playful and some serious-with data from the Google News Lab.

[Insert header pun here … punalty intended]

This week, fans around the world put the Gooooooooooogle in goooooooooooal!, making the World Cup the single biggest topic in Search. Everybody loves a home team, but it's Brazil that's leading searches globally. Meh about the players but love the game? Get in on the action with "Drills and skills" videos on YouTube; their views have increased six times since the last FIFA World Cup. And you can keep track of all your favorite teams and players with Google Trends.

The best part of the world's best lasagna

Amid searches for "best in the world," the top contenders were "best soccer player in the world" (because World Cup, see above) and "best restaurants in the world," since the list of top 50 restaurants in the world was released this week. Topping the list is an Italian eatery whose menu listings include "an eel swimming up the Po river" and "the crunchy part of the lasagna." Clearly they're onto something ... the top searched "world's best" food is lasagna, which maybe you'd pair with the next item on the list, "world's best beer."

The sun never sets on party ideas

If you found that beer, hopefully you sipped it on it yesterday-it was summer solstice, the longest day of the year. And if that lager rendered you pensive, you may have joined those who wondered, "what is the summer solstice?" and, soberly, "when does summer end?" Perk up while the sun's up: "summer solstice party ideas" was the top related query to the phenomenon, and no place searched for the solstice more than the U.K., where nearly 10,000 people gathered to celebrate at Stonehenge.

Summer solstice playlist

Queen Bey and the queen's consort Jay-Z reign again, dropping a surprise album, "Everything Is Love," last weekend. Search interest went up for both Bey and Jay in the U.S., 92 percent and 130 percent respectively, but Beyoncé was searched more than Jay-Z in every U.S. state. Jay-Z's streaming platform Tidal also got its own wave of searches: interest in Tidal spiked 267 percent in the past week. The album release included a masterpiece of a music video at the Louvre, prompting people to search "How much does it cost to rent out the Louvre?" and "Where is the Mona Lisa?"

Crisis at the border

On a more serious note, the world turned its attention to the U.S.-Mexico border this week, as anger erupted over immigrant children being separated from their families and held at migrant detention centers. A viral photo of a young girl caused a 3000 percent spike in searches for "crying toddler at border." Searches for the Secretary of Homeland Security spiked by over 5000 percent, as did searches for former First Lady Laura Bush, who spoke out against the separation. The top "how to help" questions this week were "How to help immigrant children?" and "How to help families separated at the border?" as people searched for ways to contribute.

When you search for well-known people, organizations and things on Google, you'll often come across a Knowledge Panel on the results page-a box with an overview of key information and links to resources to help you go deeper.

Individuals and organizations with Knowledge Panels can use our verification process to claim their panels and provide authoritative feedback on the information and images presented. Now we're updating that process as well as extending verification eligibility to more entities.

Any person, organization, sports team, event and media property with a Knowledge Panel is eligible to get verified and suggest edits to the information shown. Simply search for your name or organization on Search and click or tap the prompt below the Knowledge Panel to begin the verification process.

Once you're verified, you can suggest factual changes to information in your Knowledge Panel and suggest a featured image. You can learn more about how to provide this feedback in our help center.

We're always working on ways to improve Search to ensure you find the most relevant, accurate information possible. We hope that by giving individuals and entities an improved way to help us get it right if something's off, we get closer to that goal.

So if you're still bummed that dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago, try Jurassic World Alive and spend some quality time with prehistoric beasts in your own natural habitat.

One of the most important things we learn as children is how to communicate with each other. We start with "goo goos and gaa gaas," then on to baby sign language, a few simple words like "momma," and our conversations get more complex from there.

For the Google Assistant to have a natural conversation, it should be able to understand when it's being spoken to and should be capable of responding to several requests during an interaction. We're taking another step forward in making your interactions with the Google Assistant more natural with Continued Conversation, available starting today on Google Home, Google Home Mini and Google Home Max.

We've heard from a lot of people that adding "Hey Google" before each follow-up question for the Assistant doesn't feel as natural as they'd like. We announced Continued Conversation at I/O as an optional setting which lets you have a natural back-and-forth conversation with the Assistant without repeating "Hey Google" for each follow-up request. The new feature is starting to roll out today, and you can turn it on in the Google Assistant app by going to Settings → Preferences → Continued Conversation and hitting the toggle.

With Continued Conversation turned on, after you ask the Assistant a question, you can ask a follow-up, set a reminder, or add something to your shopping list without having to say "Hey Google" each time. You can say "thank you" or "stop" once you're done, or we'll end the conversation once we detect that you're no longer talking to the Assistant. You'll still need to activate your Assistant devices with "Ok Google," "Hey Google," or with a physical trigger, but with this new optional setting turned on, the Assistant will stay active for long enough to respond to follow up questions so you don't have to say "Hey Google" as often.

So next time you wake up and the skies are grey, just ask "Hey Google, what's the weather today?"... "And what about tomorrow?"... "Can you add a rain jacket to my shopping list"... "And remind me to bring an umbrella tomorrow morning"..."Thank you!"

With today's update, your conversations with the Google Assistant will be more natural and intuitive than they've ever been-your Google Assistant is growing up!

Editor's note: To celebrate the hard work, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of app makers around the world, this week, and over the coming months, we'll celebrate our Android community by featuring founders, product managers, designers and developers from around the world. We'll showcase their passions and also hear about what they do when they step away from their computers. Meet our next app maker, Niek Bokkers, a Dutch adventurer, co-founder and creative director of Polarsteps. And check out more #IMakeApps stories on g.co/play/imakeapps.

Niek is an adventurer by heart. He started traveling with his dad and twin brother when he was six and hasn't stopped since, going on epic adventures to Africa and Asia. His travels inspired the idea for Polarsteps, a travel tracking app that automatically captures every place you visit.

We caught up with Niek during his latest trip to Nepal:

When did you get into technology?
With a dad in IT, I grew up with technology. I first started applying it myself at university. After a few years of building websites and other interactive concepts, I combined my passion for travel with the possibilities of technology.

How did you come up with the idea for Polarsteps?
The first setup I made years ago when I crossed the Atlantic on a catamaran with my father. I wanted to find a way to keep my family and friends up to date on our progress on the ocean. We bought a satellite phone that allowed me to send GPS coordinates to a cellphone that I had connected to a server. The GPS coordinates were calculated into an X and Y value that were plotted on map. Every day at 6pm we would send out an update to make it easy to see if we had made some progress. Back at home I decided to build the first real prototype of the Polarsteps app and brought it with me on my bike trip from Amsterdam to Capetown. I was getting so much positive feedback during the trip that I decided to professionalise the app.

What is your role at Polarsteps?
My responsibility is to make sure that travelers love our app and our company. Part of that means coming up with cool new features and of course, validating them.

What has been your experience with Android & Google Play?
It has been a great! From the 1st prototype we built, to our most recent challenges around scaling up, we have found Android and Google Play to be incredibly developer-friendly. Without it I couldn't have made my dream come true!

How has your app business grown since you started?
Soon after we started Polarsteps, we found the means to work on the product full time. First we were with 4, now we're about to hire our 9th employee. Our app has more than 600k downloads from all over the world and is used in more than 180 countries.

Several years ago, we brought our privacy and security settings together in one place to make it easier for you to choose the options that are right for you. Billions of people have now visited their Google Account and over 20 million people do so every day.

Today, we're announcing an improved Google Account experience. It includes new features to more easily navigate your account, more prominent security and privacy options, and detailed summaries of relevant information associated with it-like your personal info, your devices, payment methods, purchases, subscriptions, reservations, and contacts. The new experience is available today for all Android users and will launch on iOS and web later this year.

New ways to find what you need

We've added new features in your Google Account to make it even easier to review and control this data. We've introduced a new search functionality that enables you to find settings and other info you might be looking for in your account, like how to change your password.

When you have a problem but don't quite know what to look for, you can access a new dedicated support section as well. There, you'll find help with common tasks, like upgrading your account storage, and get answers from community experts.

More helpful privacy and security information

We know that when it comes to data and privacy, one size does not fit all. To help you better understand and take control of your Google Account, we've made all your privacy options easy to review with our new intuitive, user-tested design. You can now more easily find your Activity controls in the Data & Personalization tab and choose what types of activity data are saved in your account to make Google work better for you. There, you'll also find the recently updated Privacy Checkup that helps you review your privacy settings and explains how they shape your experience across Google services.

In October, we updated our Security Checkup to provide you with an overview of your account security and personalized recommendations. The new Google Account experience builds on this and will show you prominent notices if we detect there's something you can do to improve your security. For example, we might suggest you remove your account from old devices you're no longer using or remove unverified apps you had granted access to your account data.

We are committed to providing you with the controls you need to choose what's right for you. For years, we've built and refined tools to help you easily understand, protect, and control your information. As needs around security and privacy evolve, we will continue to improve these important tools to help you control how Google works for you.

Every minute of every day, 31 people are displaced from their homes, seeking sanctuary from global crisis, conflict and violence. No region of the world is immune. These events can have a particularly gut-wrenching impact on children, as we've seen up close recently along the U.S. border. In response, Google.org is matching employee contributions to four organizations working with migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border: Texas Civil Rights Project, The Florence Project, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and Kids in Need of Defense.

Today, World Refugee Day, we're reminded that this crisis goes well beyond our border. As displacement hits new records, it has never been more urgent to work together to find long-term solutions. Since September 2015, we've donated more than $25 million in Google.org grants to organizations that support refugees, including a $5 million grant last year to help the UN Refugee Agency and nonprofit Learning Equality improve refugees' access to information and education.

As part of that, we gave $2 million in grant support to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Mercy Corps to create Refugee.Info, a simple set of webpages with helpful information for refugees as they establish new lives in new locations. This past April, Google designers and engineers collaborated with the IRC on a soon-to-be released next version of the platform based on human-centered design and adapted into Arabic. The tool currently serves 800,000 refugees in five countries. With the expansion into Jordan, thousands more refugees will have access to timely and accurate information.

Last month another group of 10 Googlers traveled to Jordan to improve and expand Edraak, an Arabic-language online learning platform created by the Queen Rania Foundation. With support from a $3 million Google.org grant, Edraak has already reached over 1.6 million learners across the Middle East and North Africa. Now, it hopes to reach 13 million children in the Middle East who have limited access to education, including refugees.

This week has brought a stark reminder of the consequences of displacement for the world's most vulnerable populations, particularly for children. As we continue our work to help migrants all over the world, we also hope for a more humane way to ensure that children, at the U.S. border and elsewhere, can reach a more promising future.

Editor's note: TensorFlow, our open source machine learning library, is just that-open to anyone. Companies, nonprofits, researchers and developers have used TensorFlow in some pretty cool ways, and we're sharing those stories here on Keyword. Here's one of them.

At Google I/O this year, we saw how high school students Shaza Mehdi and Nile Ravenell developed PlantMD, an app that lets you detect diseases in plants using TensorFlow. These young researchers are not alone in their mission to help farmers. PlantMD's machine learning model was inspired by a dataset from PlantVillage, a research and development unit at Penn State University. PlantVillage created an app called Nuru, Swahili for "light," to assist farmers to grow better cassava, a crop in Africa that provides food for over half a billion people daily.

Though cassava is tolerant to droughts and capable of growing with minimal soil-making it an ideal crop in harsh weather conditions-it's also susceptible to many diseases and pests. The symptoms of a diseased plant develops slowly, so it can be difficult for farmers to diagnose these problems in time.

PlantVillage and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) developed a solution using machine learning that could help farmers better identify and manage these diseases quickly. They annotated thousands of cassava plant images, identifying and classifying diseases to train a machine learning model using TensorFlow. Once the model was trained to identify diseases, it was deployed in the app. Farmers can wave their phone in front of a cassava leaf and if a plant had a disease, the app could identify it and give options on the best ways to manage it.

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  An example of a diseased cassava leaf. Cassava is a crop that provides for over half a billion people daily.

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  Farmers in Tanzania are using the Nuru app to better manage their cassava crops.

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  Nuru the app works by waving your phone in front of a cassava leaf and identifying specific diseases.

  
  

PlantMD and Nuru are part of a larger trend in the agriculture industry. Whether it's dairy farmers in the Netherlands, cucumber farmers in Japan, cassava farmers in Tanzania, or your neighborhood gardeners, AI is taking root in agriculture and is helping farmers around the world.

Since the global advertising and creative communities first came together for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the 1950s, advertising and creative content have expanded across all sorts of media, from print to film to digital and social. We believe augmented reality (AR) will take its place among these media as a powerful canvas for brands and agencies seeking to engage more deeply with their audiences.

AR lets creators project 3D objects into the physical world so you can interact with them as if they were real. This means that virtually any room can be a virtual playground or showroom, opening up infinite new creative possibilities.

At this year's Cannes Lions, we wanted to inspire the creative community to give AR a try. So we brought AR to Google's annual interactive showcase, the Google Beach. Festival attendees can learn how to create great brand experiences with AR at our lightning talks (which viewers at home can watch via live stream). And to bring AR experiences to life, we partnered with Ogilvy, an advertising agency, as well as MediaMonks, a creative production house.

Together, they used ARCore-Google's platform for building AR experiences-to break new ground on some well-loved campaigns. In one of my favorite examples, they reimagined an existing PERRIER & Juice TV campaign with AR, bringing it to life by making the ingredients in your beverage appear to jump out of the bottle and into your physical surroundings.

As Perrier's Global Brand Director, Marion Taisne, put it, "AR offers immersive experiences in real life that bring people into our brand universe. This experience allowed us to go beyond traditional ads to demonstrate that when fruit juice mixes with PERRIER, 'extraordinaire' happens."

We can only imagine how creators must have felt when campaigns at Cannes Lions first used radio or television. We hope creators today feel a similar sense of excitement as they find ways to bridge the digital and physical worlds using AR.

Investigative journalists depend on a number of digital techniques in their work-from analyzing data on a shared spreadsheet, to identifying the original source of a photograph or picking through the minutes of a public meeting on a local website. As part of the Google News Initiative's efforts to support high-quality journalism, we want to enable journalists to discover how digital tools can help them delve deeper or get to the facts more quickly. That's why we're working with the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) to provide a new program, called "Access to Tools."

Over the coming months a team of expert trainers will provide up to 20 free workshops across the U.K., each designed to help newsroom and freelance journalists sharpen their digital newsgathering and research skills. The practical workshops will feature technology from a range of providers and include real-life examples, including how individual journalists have traced original sources. We'll also support the CIJ to host a conference in northern England for the first time, offering advanced skills for journalists living and working outside of London.

Established in 2003, The CIJ offers real expertise in investigative journalism standards and shares the Google News Initiative's ambition to widen access to tools and training. The director of the CIJ, James Harkin, says: "Our leading concern is to put the best tools in the hands of investigative journalists, and then grow their expertise in using them. Building on our 15 years of expertise in data journalism, advanced internet research, financial search, and internet-powered fact-checking and our relationships of trust with the corporate and independent local media, 'Access to Tools' is the perfect way to extend the already impressive reach of our regional network and to get out there into more regional newsrooms, communities, and universities."

In addition to our work with CIJ, we'll continue to provide a free range of training workshops directly to newsrooms and journalism schools. Since the launch of the News Lab in 2015, we've trained nearly 7 thousand journalists in the U.K. alone-but there's more to do.

You can learn more about the free U.K. workshops on the CIJ website. For those further afield, our Google News Initiative Training Center has a specific course on Investigative Reporting.

Whether they're outwitting opponents in the latest mobile game, exploring massively multiplayer online worlds, or navigating 3D spaces in VR, players want to be connected-to new stories and experiences, to their favorite game creators, and to their fellow gamers.

But it can be challenging to build connected games. Developers find they need to spend valuable time and resources managing infrastructure when they should be doing what they are most passionate about-building great games. We want to help.

Today, we're announcing a strategic alliance with Unity, a leading real-time 3D game and content creation platform, to simplify game development. Working together, we're building a suite of managed services and tools for creating connected games, the first of which will focus on real-time multiplayer experiences.

As part of this, Google Cloud will be the default cloud provider for developers building connected games with Unity, helping them to easily build and scale their games. This means developers will be able to take advantage of Google Cloud right from the Unity development environment-from our robust global network that enables low-latency player connectivity, to the ability to quickly scale game servers, to multi-TB memory nodes that can hold massive 3D environments-all without needing to become cloud experts.

We're also collaborating with Unity to co-found an open source project to connect players in multiplayer games. This project deeply embodies our philosophy for gaming-open source, community-driven solutions built in collaboration with the world's leading game companies. This project will launch publicly for downloads and code contributions this summer-stay tuned for more in the coming months.

In addition, Unity has announced that it's currently migrating all of the core infrastructure powering its services and offerings to Google Cloud. Unity will be running its business on the same cloud that Unity game developers will develop, test and globally launch their games.

We hope this alliance helps developers build more connected experiences that delight gamers. We'll roll out new products and features over the coming months, and in the meantime, you can learn more by visiting the connected games page on Unity's website. If you're attending Unite Berlin this week, don't miss the keynote featuring Google Cloud's CEO Diane Greene on June 19 at 9:00 AM PT, or watch the live stream online.

We can't wait to play what you build.

Ten years ago, for the very first Doodle 4 Google contest, we asked students "what if?" A decade later, we've been privileged to receive hundreds of thousands of submissions for our annual contest-submissions that reflect the dreams, hopes and talents of students across the country. These young artists help us to see the world through their eyes and find inspiration in unexpected places.

This year was no exception. We asked students to respond to the theme "What Inspires Me…" and received doodles depicting everything from a love of family and food to a passion for intergalactic roller coasters (!).

Now we're thrilled to announce the winner of the 2018 Doodle 4 Google contest: first grader Sarah Gomez-Lane, who drew delightful dinosaurs to highlight her dream of becoming a paleontologist. Sarah was our K-3 finalist, and the Virginia state winner. We fell in love with Sarah's rendering of her dinos, and were blown away by her big (you might even say "dino-sized"!) ambitions for her future, especially at her young age.

When asked how she felt upon hearing she was a finalist, Sarah exclaimed that she was "surprised!" Her advice to students interested in submitting to future Doodle 4 Google contests? "Try your best and have fun!"

For the first time in Doodle 4 Google's 10-year history, the National Winner will have the opportunity to turn their submission into an animated, interactive Doodle featured on the Google homepage. Over the summer, Sarah will collaborate with the Doodle team to bring her artwork to life. She'll also receive $30,000 toward a college scholarship, and her elementary school in Falls Church, VA, will receive $50,000 to spend on technology to help students like Sarah continue to pursue what inspires them.

Thank you to everyone who participated not only this year, but throughout the past decade. And, of course, a huge congratulations to all of the talented 2018 winners. From all of us at Google: keep dreaming-and keep doodling!

Be Internet Awesome helps kids be safe, confident explorers of the online world. Today, we're launching a number of enhancements to the program, including curriculum expansions, updates to the Interland game, and interactive slide presentations to bring program lessons to life, created in partnership with Pear Deck. We're also excited to make these important lessons accessible to more families by expanding the Be Internet Awesome program into Spanish as Sé genial en Internet. We've invited Araceli Gomez, a STEM educator at South Gate Middle School in Los Angeles, CA, to talk about why these resources are so important for her community.

My career in education began in 1997 at Tweedy Elementary School, in the city of South Gate, CA, where the population is 99 percent Latino. The best part of being an educator in the same city for over 20 years is the relationships I've built with families and students in the community. When former students stop by to simply say hello or to share their education and career success, it's inspiring to know I played a little part in helping them reach their full potential.

Most of the students I work with are bilingual, but their parents predominantly speak Spanish at home. These parents are often seeking guidance and looking for online safety resources. According to new research commissioned by Google, Latino parents in Spanish-speaking households are almost twice as likely as their English-speaking counterparts to favor talking about online safety at home, as a family (39 percent to 21 percent). I'm starting to see more information about internet safety in English, but for most of the families I work with, that information might as well be nonexistent because of the language barrier. That's a big reason why I'm really excited that Google's Be Internet Awesome is now available in Spanish as Sé genial en Internet.

With Sé genial en Internet, Spanish-speaking parents in my community and all over the world will now be able to use the program's tools and resources to help their kids become good digital citizens. Not only will they be able to reinforce at home the lessons we're teaching, they'll be able to do so in a language they feel comfortable with.

Over the time I've been teaching, advances in technology have changed many of the ways learning takes place. Research today is done online, and assignments and homework are given, completed and graded through online accounts. And as a STEM educator, I'm always looking for programs that address the current needs of my students. The Be Internet Awesome curriculum is a great resource because it empowers students with the fundamentals of digital safety in a fun, engaging way they really respond to.

Just as we teach kids right from wrong in the real world, we also need to show them how to interact on the internet. To help make the internet safer for everyone, all families need to be equipped with the right information, resources, and tools to keep the discussion going at home. I'm excited to see Google recognize that need and expand their programs to reach even more kids, families and educators with Sé genial en Internet.

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¡Explora el Nuevo "Be Internet Awesome" en Español!

"Be Internet Awesome" ayuda a los niños a ser seguros y confiables exploradores del mundo en línea. Hoy, estamos lanzando una serie de mejoras al programa, que incluyen expansiones de planes de estudio, actualizaciones del juego Interland juego y presentaciones de diapositivas interactivas para dar vida a las clases de aprendizaje del programa, creadas en asociación con Pear Deck. También nos entusiasma hacer accesibles estas importantes lecciones a más familias al expandir el programa "Be Internet Awesome" al español con "Sé genial en Internet". Hemos invitado a Araceli Gómez, educadora de STEM en la South Gate Middle School en Los Ángeles, a hablar sobre por qué estos recursos son tan importantes para su comunidad.

Mi carrera en educación comenzó en 1997 en la escuela primaria Tweedy, en la ciudad de South Gate, California, donde la población es 99 por ciento latina. La mejor parte de ser educadora en la misma ciudad por más de 20 años es la relación que he desarrollado con las familias y los estudiantes de la comunidad. Cuando los exalumnos se acercan para decir simplemente hola o compartir su éxito educativo y profesional, es increíble saber que jugué un pequeño papel en ayudarlos a alcanzar su máximo potencial.

La mayoría de los estudiantes con los que trabajo son bilingües, pero sus padres hablan predominantemente español en casa. Estos padres a menudo buscan orientación y recursos de seguridad en línea. Según una nueva investigación auspiciada por Google, los padres latinos en hogares de habla hispana tienen casi el doble de probabilidades que los que hablan inglés de preferir conversar sobre seguridad en línea en el hogar, como familia (39 por ciento comparado con 21 por ciento). Estoy comenzando a ver más información sobre seguridad en Internet en inglés, pero para la mayoría de las familias con las que trabajo, esa información prácticamente no existe por la barrera del idioma. Esa es una gran razón por la que estoy muy emocionada de que "Be Internet Awesome" de Google está ahora disponible en español: Sé genial en Internet.

Con "Sé genial en Internet", los padres hispanohablantes en mi comunidad y de todo el mundo podrán usar las herramientas y los recursos disponibles en su idioma para reforzar lecciones importantes en casa y ayudar a sus hijos a convertirse en buenos ciudadanos digitales.

Durante el tiempo que he estado enseñando, los avances en la tecnología han cambiado muchas de las formas en que se aprende. La investigación de hoy se hace en línea, y las asignaciones y tareas se llevan a cabo y son calificadas en línea. Y como educadora de STEM, siempre estoy buscando programas que beneficien y satisfagan las necesidades actuales de mis alumnos. El plan de estudios "Be Internet Awesome" es un gran recurso porque ayuda a los estudiantes los fundamentos básicos de la seguridad digital de una manera divertida y atractiva.

Del mismo modo que enseñamos a los niños a diferenciar entre el bien y el mal en el mundo real, también debemos mostrarles cómo interactuar en Internet. Para hacerlo, todas las familias deben contar con la información, los recursos y las herramientas adecuadas para aprender y continuar la comunicación al respecto en el hogar. Estoy emocionada de ver a Google reconocer esa necesidad y expandir sus programas para llegar a más niños, familias y educadores con "Sé genial en Internet".

Whether we're listening to history lessons on the commute, news stories at the gym, or gripping mysteries while preparing dinner, podcasts have become an essential part of life. But, it can still be difficult to get started and find new shows you'll love-and work still remains in making podcasts accessible and discoverable for all.

Today, we're releasing the Google Podcasts app for Android, available globally in the Play Store. Integrated with the Google Assistant across your devices and packed with personalized recommendations, Google Podcasts is designed to make it easier than ever for Android users to discover and listen to podcasts. We're also announcing a partnership with industry experts to improve diversity in podcast creation, and sharing a peek at how AI can help transform podcasting for the better.

Smarter recommendations with Google Podcasts

With Google Podcasts, you can listen and subscribe to any podcast, including popular shows like The Daily, Cyrus Says, Modern Love, Lage der Nation, The Bill Simmons Podcast, and literally millions more. Beyond the podcasts you already know, Google Podcasts uses AI to offer recommendations based on your listening habits-such as your interest in sports or true crime, or podcasts from a particular network.

Google Podcasts seamlessly syncs across a variety of Google products, including the Google Assistant. So if you're listening to a podcast on your phone during your commute home, you can resume it on your Google Home when you arrive. Over time, we'll integrate Google Podcasts into more places you use Google.

How podcasters can optimize for Google

With Google Podcasts, we're focused on helping podcast creators reach a broader audience. To ensure inclusion in the Google Podcasts app, creators should follow our updated developer guidelines, which you may already be familiar with for other Google apps. In today's update, a few new sections cover how to:

• Prompt Google to index new podcasts as quickly as possible

• Generate a direct link to your podcast

• Download the Google Podcasts brand assets for sharing on your website

• Track analytics that come from Google Podcasts

Promoting inclusive storytelling in podcasting

Podcasting holds unbounded promise as a storytelling medium, but its future depends on a rich array of stories, voices and creators. While there are more podcasts than ever before, there continues to be an imbalance in who is creating them. Looking at top charts, only about a quarter of the most popular podcasts tend to be hosted by women, and even fewer by people of color.

That's why we're also partnering with the podcast industry on a program to increase the diversity of voices and remove barriers to podcasting. The program will be guided by an advisory board from around the world, with the primary goal of enabling skills development and experimentation from underrepresented voices, as well as cultivating ideas and processes that can scale throughout the industry. We'll be rolling out more details this summer, and we encourage you to fill out the online form if you are interested.

The future of Google Podcasts

We couldn't be more excited to help people around the world discover podcasts they'll love, and this is just the beginning. Looking forward, Google Podcasts will be a launchpad for building an even better podcast listening experience using AI.

For example, as speech-to-text technology continues to improve, we'll be able to provide new features like automatic subtitling, which is especially helpful if you are hearing impaired or in a noisy area without headphones. Powered by Google Translate, subtitles can then be made available in a wide variety of languages, further improving access to podcasts.

We're excited about where we're heading with Google Podcasts. To try out the new experience today, visit the Play store.

Editor's note: To celebrate the hard work, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of app makers around the world, this week, and over the coming months, we'll celebrate our Android community by featuring founders, product managers, designers and developers from around the world. We'll showcase their passions and also hear about what they do when they step away from their computers. Check out more #IMakeApps stories on g.co/play/imakeapps.

Faith Ringgold, an 88-year old artist and creator of Quiltuduko has been a pioneering figure in American art for six decades. She is a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, author, educator and activist. She's had exhibits in museums and galleries around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

In her 80s she came up with the idea for Quiltuduko, an art making game inspired by the Japanese number game, Sudoku. The rules are simple, the game can be a challenge, but the solution makes art.

This is what she told us when we caught up with her at ACA Galleries:

Why did you decide to embark into the world of technology?
The moment computers became available, I bought one for myself and one for each of my two daughters. When my granddaughter was very young I acquired a computer for her as well. I didn't want them to get lost in the TV and ignore their work. Computers allowed them to get information easily and learn about anything, anywhere, anytime.

After I received my BA I considered the possibility of getting a masters degree in computer science rather than art. The computer field was new and opportunities were abundant for those interested. To clarify my dilemma, I went to Europe to meet with a group of artists who had left America. I wanted to see if I should do this too as I considered changing my major. In the end I received my Masters in art and art education.​ I love art​.

How did you come up with the idea of Quiltuduko?
I played the game Sudoku often and was impressed. I've always loved games and was good at solving puzzles. As I played Sudoku it became apparent to me that it would be better if color and images were used and not just numbers. When the game was finished I wanted to have something to look at​, not just numbers​.

Early on, I discovered the Kuba design in Africa which repeats colors and images in a similar way as Sudoku. It introduced triangles as well as squares. I love design and decor. I've traveled all over the world being inspired by the designs of other cultures​, especially Africa​. When I created Quiltuduko, 9 images and different colors were used rather than just numbers.

What was it like for you to work on the game?
Computers are getting more complicated and I'm still keeping up. I was good at computers and loved working on the game. It combines my love of art with my love of computers and puzzles. I love design and figuring things out and wanted to ​embellish the concept of ​Sudoku​ as an art game​.

Do you think mobile apps and games are a form of art?
Yes, definitely. Quiltuduko is an art game. This game is an expansion of my own art. These are my original designs and I consider them art, especially when the game is finished you have a work of art that can be printed, framed and enjoyed!

It's all about art and design. I have created original designs for the game but have also used existing works of art that I created in the pattern of Quiltuduko.

What has been your experience with Android and Google Play?
I like both Android and Google Play. I played Sudoku on these platforms which gave me the idea of Quiltuduko. This game is great for adults to keep one's mind clear and active and it's also good for children​, and people who love art​.