Parents of Fair Haven students recently discovered How Google Apps for Education Is Improving Schools.

A series of events, hosted by Fair Haven School District EdTech Coach Chris Aviles on Oct. 5, featured a video presentation by Knollwood School fifth-grader Andon Milouchev.

“I think Google is great because of all the things it can do,” Milouchev announced as shared the video he had created. His presentation highlighted examples — including engineering-type drawings created with MinecraftEDU — of what Fair Haven students can achieve with Google technology.

“From a teaching perspective, Google Classroom is a game-changer,” Aviles said. “You can get so much more done in a much shorter amount of time.”

Over 30 million students, staff, and administration around the world have “gone Google,” representing an increase of 100 percent over the past two years.

Google Apps for Education and Google Classroom offer advantages, such as real-time sharing of information, since they were created with accessibility and collaboration in mind, Aviles noted. They are free and easily accessible from cell phones, tablets, and laptops, he added.

In addition to the fact that Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School has “gone Google,” Aviles said that seven out of eight Ivy League schools use Google Apps for education.

With one in roughly a dozen educators worldwide certified in Google Lead Learner, Aviles has the credentials of a Google-certified trainer and innovator.

He splits his time with students between the Sickles Studio (for students in kindergarten through third grade) and the Knollwood Innovation Lab (for fifth through sixth graders).

At Sickles, “going Google” begins in kindergarten when students begin using Google Chromebooks. The introduction to Google Classroom comes in first grade.

Aviles also provides training to the Fair Haven staff and administration, and says that teachers are “very excited” about it and have seen many benefits.

For example, Sickles staff members had been repetitively creating script letters on their whiteboards in order to teach handwriting. They now plan to record the action of handwriting the different letters and make the video available to students via Google, freeing themselves up for much more one-on-one instruction.

Fair Haven plans to be one of the first school districts to experience Google Expeditions, which provides a virtual reality field trip experience for students.

And within the next few weeks, Knollwood School students will have a virtual meeting with the masterminds behind the popular Minecraft video game and its educational version, MinecraftEDU.

How Google Apps for Education Is Improving Schools was the latest in a series of “Go Google” events presented by the Fair Haven School District’s Family Institute Initiative. For information on upcoming events, visit the school district’s web site at fairhaven.edu.

— Edited press release from the Fair Haven School District