About 1,000 educators will descend on Dallas this weekend to attend the Extra Yard for Teachers summit. The event is organized by the College Football Playoff Foundation as a way to boost education in advance of Monday night’s championship game. For this week’s Friday Conversation, Google education evangelist Jaime Casap sat down with KERA’s Stella Chavez to talk about his role in the summit and in classrooms.
Interview Highlights: Jaime Casap ...
... On his job at Google:
“My focus is primarily on how technology can be used in education, so my job is to work across all the various teams and to really think about the future of learning and how our tools play a role in that.
... On what he'll be discussing at the Teachers Summit on Saturday:
"This is a very exciting time in education because this generation of teachers – those teachers in our classroom today – are the ones who are creating all these new learning models that are taking technology and taking the web and embedding it into their curriculum.
... On his upbringing:
“I grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New Year. I’m a first-generation American. I grew up on welfare and food stamps and here I am talking to you, working at Google and education’s the reason why. It’s given me the opportunity to have a different perspective when we talk about education, when we talk about the issues that we’re really dealing with.
... On being one of the few Latinos at Google:
“I think Google and other companies, especially in technology, want to have a diversified workforce. We want to recruit as many folks as we can from various backgrounds and I think that’s what we working towards. But it starts in our education system. We need to get kids interested and involved in computer science, in engineering.
