Google has announced a summer campaign for children across India that it claims will be fun, yet educational. Google says the campaign — #SummerWithGoogle — will help children spend more time learning and making new discoveries, and also teach them how to become responsible explorers of the web.
As part of the campaign, Google will assign a weekly activity to children, releasing one assignment every week for four weeks.
For four consecutive Mondays, starting May 28, Google will share assignments that will make children and their parents team up to discover a new country, learn its language, explore its history and culture, and even try their hands at coding a mobile app through a range of Google products. At the end of four weeks, 100 children and their parents will get a chance to visit a Google office for a technology summer camp.
Here is the first #SummerWithGoogle assignment that was released on 28 May.
According to a Googleblog post by the tech giant, A letter to parents…, each assignment will also carry questions on the four fundamental codes of being ‘Internet Awesome’ and teach children on how to be “Internet Smart’, ‘Internet Alert’, ‘Internet Strong’, ‘Internet Kind’ and ‘Internet Brave”.
The #SummerWithGoogle assignments will range from “exploring the country that is home to all the Pandas in the world” on Google Earth, to saying ‘Gracias’ and ‘Por Favor’ as they learn phrases in Spanish and other languages on Google Translate, to taking dramatic virtual tours of museums to make their own gallery on Google Arts & Culture. It will also help the young web explorers build their very own app to share their summer experience.
Google has also partnered with “Kidzania” to set up a “Summer with Google” experience zone where children can take a virtual tour and learn about the essentials of being safe on the Internet.
The assignments can be accessed on the #SummerWithGoogle website and Google’s social media handles every week. The assignments will be accompanied by a set of instructions answering all “how to” questions. Each assignment will be linked to the previous one, and carry positive marking for every correct answer.
At the end of four weeks, children can look up to a summer camp at Google’s Gurgaon and Hyderabad campus, with the company flying upto 100 participants along with their guardians from across the country. At the Google campuses, says the blog post, children will get the first-hand experience of Google technology, can indulge in fun activities and participate in quizzes.
“As a parent myself, it has always been a challenge for me to engage my kids meaningfully, summer after summer. And the struggle is real for many more parents,” said Sunita Mohanty, Director, Trust and Safety, Google India.
“Therefore, we partnered with our product leaders to bring parents, a series of activities they can do along with their kids to make this a memorable summer,” she added.
“The entire campaign will combine real world projects with virtual learning experiences and will equip kids with the right digital skills so when they return to school post this summer, they are Internet Awesome,” Mohanty noted.