Vanderbilt became the fourth out of 10 stops on the “App to School” tour when the Google bus parked outside of the Commons Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Google set up a tent with multiple computers displaying different Google application demonstrations for students to check out. It also offered free T-shirts and Frisbees, and a Wii station was set up in the back of the bus.
According to Google Business Development Manager Jeff Keltner and Assistant Marketing Manager Miriam Schneider, Google included a mix of schools on its tour, ranging in location, size and time of deployment of Google services.
Google believed a college tour was necessary because it did not have a chance to speak to students about the services in the first two years of the apps initiative.
“We thought it was time to talk to people literally where the rubber meets the road,” said Keltner.
Google decided to make the tour as environmentally friendly as possible by running the bus on biodiesel fuel and using solar power to run the electronics inside. “It’s hard to find a bus that is completely environmentally sustainable, but we did the best we could,” Keltner said.
Google apps include Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. Google Docs can be used as a collaboration tool between students, as it enables them to work on the same document at the same time from different computers. It features word processing, spreadsheets and presentations and eliminates the need for e-mailing attachments when working on a two-person project. Google Sites is an app that assists in website creation.
