Introducing the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree

Originally posted on Google Developers Blog

Posted by Shanea King-Roberson, Program Manager

As a developer, writing your app is important. But even more important is getting it into the hands of users. Ideally millions of users. To that end, you can now learn what it takes to design, validate, prototype, monetize, and market app ideas from the ground up and grow them into a scalable business with the new Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree.

Designed by Google in partnership with Udacity, the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree, takes 4-7 months to complete. We have teamed up with most successful thought leaders in this space to provide students with a unique and battle-tested perspective. You’ll meet Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm”, Pete Koomen, co-founder of Optimizely; Aaron Harris and Kevin Hale, Partners at Y-Combinator; Nir Eyal, author of the book “Hooked: How to build habit forming products” and co-founder of Product Hunt; Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube, rapid prototyping company InVision and many more.

All of the content that make up this nanodegree is available online for free at udacity.com/google. In addition, Udacity provides paid services, including access to coaches, guidance on your project, help staying on track, career counseling, and a certificate when you complete the nanodegree.

The Tech Entrepreneur offering will consist of the following courses:

• Product Design: Learn Google’s Design Sprint methodology, Ideation & Validation, UI/UX design and gathering the right metrics.
• Prototyping: Experiment with rapid-low and high-fidelity prototyping on mobile and the web using online tools.
• Monetization: Learn how to monetize your app and how to set up an effective payment funnel.
• App Marketing: Understand your market, analyze competition, position your product, prepare for launch, acquire customers and learn growth hacks.
• How to get your startup started: Find out whether you really need venture capital funding, evaluate build vs. buy, and learn simple ways to monitor and maintain your startup business effectively.

Pitch your ideas in front of Venture Capitalists

Upon completion, students will receive a joint certificate from Udacity and Google. The top graduates will also be invited to an exclusive pitch event, where they will have the opportunity to pitch their final product to venture capitalists at Google.

Bring Your Apps into the Classroom, with Google Play for Education

Posted by Shazia Makhdumi, Head of Strategic EDU Partnerships, Google Play team

Google Play for Education has officially launched. It’s an extension of Google Play that’s designed for schools, simplifying discovery of educational apps and enabling developers and content providers to reach K-12 educators in the U.S. It offers bulk purchasing with purchase orders and instant distribution of educational apps, videos and other educational content to students' Android tablets via the cloud. Google Play for Education helps your apps gain visibility with the right audiences, without having to knock on school doors.

If you've built an Android app that would be awesome for schools—or even have an idea for one—now's the time to jump in. We'll put you one click away from getting purchased and installed by entire school districts. Class Dojo, Explain Everything, Nearpod, and Socrative are already getting discovered in Google Play for Education.

How to join Google Play for Education

If you already have an educational Android app you can use the Google Play Developer Console to mark your apps for inclusion in Google Play for Education. Marking your app identifies it as suitable for the US K-12 educational market and queues it for educator approval. These educators perform a first-pass qualification of apps, assigning the appropriate subject, grade, and common core standards metadata, while evaluating if the app meets the Google Play for Education criteria for classroom use.

Designing great apps for classrooms

High quality apps are top priority for teachers. Whether you already have an existing K-12 educational app or are looking to build one, take a look at our detailed requirements and guidelines—which we have compiled for you based on educator feedback—to ensure your app is appropriate for a K-12 environment. Also ensure that your app is optimized for both 7” and 10” Android tablets. Then, upload your new or updated app through the Developer Console, opt in to Google Play for Education, and publish. We will email you when your app has been evaluated.

For more information, please visit the Google Play for Education pages on the Android developer site. We are excited to be supporting schools to bring the best content and tools to their students. We look forward to seeing your app on Google Play for Education.

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Offer Your Educational Apps On Google Play for Education

Posted by Pratip Banerji, Google Play for Education team

Last month, we announced Google Play for Education — a platform enabling developers and content providers to reach K-12 educators and students in the United States through a new Android based initiative. Google Play for Education is an extension of the Google Play Store for schools, adding curation, bulk purchasing, and instant distribution to students’ Android tablets for educational apps, books and videos. As we said at the time, we are excited to be doing our part to make technology and innovation in the classroom more accessible.

Starting today, you can use the Google Play Developer Console to mark your apps for inclusion in Google Play for Education, which is actively being piloted in schools across the country. Marking your app identifies it as targeted for the US K-12 educational market and queues it for evaluation by a third-party network of educators. These educators perform a first-pass qualification of apps, assigning the appropriate subject, grade, and common core standards metadata, while evaluating whether they meet the Google Play for Education criteria for classroom use.

Leading up to the fall launch, the Google Play for Education team is conducting an extensive series of pilots that include schools and students across the U.S. By marking your app for inclusion now, you will be getting your app into the hands of these schools and key influencers in the education technology community.

Whether you already have an existing educational app or are looking to build one, take a look at our Guidelines for Apps to make sure your app is appropriate for the K-12 environment. Follow our detailed requirements and test your app to ensure it is optimized for Android tablets. Then, upload your new or updated app, mark it for inclusion in Google Play for Education, and publish. We will email you when your app has been evaluated. Depending on app submission volume, this process can take 3-4 weeks. For more information, see Get Started.

Also please tune in to our panel for education developers on Tuesday June 25th at 10:30 AM EDT. Live from the ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) Conference, we’ll tell you more about developing for Google in Education and we’ll host some educators who explain what they are looking for in educational apps. The panel will be streamed on Google Developers Live and we'll make the video available to you as well.

For more information on Google Play for Education, please visit developer.android.com/edu.

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