Multi-faceted Refractions

Earlier this week, I received and email from the Google for Educators group that I belong to. In it, they introduced their Doodle4Google. Google is eventually going to award a student whose work is judged the best a $10,000 college scholarship and their school a $25,000 technology grant. The best 40 designs are going to be used by Google on their web site. Earlier this year, Google was encouraging students to work on several challenges, most of them documenting open source software. Complete three tasks, earn $100. Complete a certain number of projects and the student would earn to trip to the Google Campus.
I don’t begrudge the student who will earn a scholarship and the school who may get an infusion of technology that is desperately needed. I do appreciate the tools that Google is making available (Docs, Presentation, Earth, Maps, Sketch up) to educators for free. These are wonderful tools which provide the foundation to help reform education.

From a certain perspective, what Google is doing could be viewed as slave labor. By tapping into work efforts of children, most of them under the age of 16, Google is saving themselves thousands of dollars of their development time. At the cost of $875 per logo, which I am guessing that they can write off as a charitable contribution, they will now have 40 new logos to display. At a net cost of $0 development time for themselves.

This is the same way that Google hooked a few of my high school students into documenting different projects, which took them several hours to complete, Google was able to have tasks completed for less than the going rate.

So I am a bit skeptical about Google’s motives. Sure, I can understand their desire to build brand loyalty into young people, so that they are more embedded into the Google brand and culture more so than they may already be. Google may be no better than Ganz, with their Webkinz, and developing branding and developing the culture of social networking. But  why are they creating such a brand loyalty in young users? Are they making sure that they can stay profitable and continue to be a great investment for the future? Are they creating the Google Borg? Are we getting closer and closer to the predictions in the EPIC series of videos?

I think we may be and I am concerned. But I will let you decide.

_{Image from Dysonstarr on Flickr}

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For those of you who have been following me via Twitter (vvrotny), you know that the past nine weeks have been stressful personally. This has caused me to be stressed professionally, first trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy and then during the last three weeks trying to play catch-up while juggling various follow up appointments. For both my wife and I, the Winter Break could not have come at a more opportune time.

During this past week, I have taken the time to indulge my inner teenager. When not attending family holiday celebrations or continuing to go to additional medical appointments, I have allowed myself the opportunity to do the things that I used to do. This includes sleeping in until 9:00 a.m. and staying up until after 12:00 midnight. During these times, I have been playing board games (Risk, Last Word, Malarky, and Blurt) with the family. I have been spending too much time playing video games (Guitar Hero II and III, Madden 05, and my favorite, NHL 2005) on the new used PS2 we got for the holiday. I have also watched too many movies (Little Miss Sunshine finally, Last King of Scotland, and Blood Diamond) plus rewatching last season’s Heroes with my children, since they just found out about this series this fall. I have also been catching up with the first season of Lost which my wife and daughter began watching with me during the second season.

Like I did when I was a teenager, I have spent a bit of time reading over the holiday. Like the old days, I ran out to my local newsstand to get the current issues of Baseball America and The Hockey News. I have been trying to finish reading  What is the What and Schulz and Peanuts.

I have not been neglecting the adult responsibilities that I have (grocery shopping, minor household repair and maintainence)  I have been focusing on silly irresponsibility and myself. And it has been fun.

As I flip the calendar to a new year and I switch from me time to work time over the course of the next six days, I look forward to sharing several other thoughts and ideas that have been running around in my head. Here’s to an exciting 2008.

This week at school is a special week that I really enjoy. It is Interim Week, a week where all “normal classes” are suspended and not homework, except for AP courses is allowed. Students pick from a wide variety of week-long activities which are suggested. Some are community service experiences, tutoring in ESL classrooms or working cleaning up a forest preserve, some are trips, such as the groups who have headed to England and Oaxaca, Mexico. Others are meant for learning that can be just plain fun, such as cake decorating or vegan cooking.

My project this year, as it has been for the last few years, is to offer a film-making course. In the course of the week, students working in groups of three or four,  to create films. Most of the films are for entertainment. This year, students are doing a day-dreaming project, a updated parody of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and a seems like a boxing/Rocky sequel. Students are required to do some story development and story-boarding before setting off to shoot. They will typically spend two and a half days filming, a day and a half editing, and then the remainder of Friday sharing our films with the others. They are doing both a trailer for the film and the film itself.

I really enjoy this week because it allows all of us, faculty and students, to enjoy a change of pace.  This is especially refreshing, since it occurs after the switch back to Central Time and we are faced with darkness by 5:15 p.m. now. This year, I am especially welcoming this week with everything else which is going on in my life over these past three weeks. Over the past 15 years, I also use this time to step away from the technology and read a few books for pleasure. Imagine that, reading for the sake of reading. This year, I have picked up both Rozelle: Czar of the NFL and What is the What by Dave Eggers.

I am creating a wiki which I will share both vintage movies and this year’s selections which I will share at a later date.

On the eve of the release of my presentation for the K12 Online Conference, I want to take a moment to diverge from the norm to share a very personal reflection.

It was 20 years ago today, on a glorious autumn afternoon,  much like the one we are experiencing today, that my wife and I joined the holy bonds of matrimony. She has stuck by me through thick and thin, better and worse, and has been supportive of my delving into these new aspects of my life, even though she doesn’t quite understand everything.

I am fortunate to have met her and to have spent the past 20 years making a life together.

Today, Google released a new collaborative tool , Google Presentation, to round out its suite of products. During our Lower School and Middle School opening Faculty Meetings, I showed teachers Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets which can be used by students as substitutes for Microsoft Word and Excel. These are tools that would allow students to work via a web browser, which would allow for students to work both at home and school without the need to have the application on either computer or emailing work back and forth. It also would allow for students to collaborate on documents together, which opens up a range of possibilities.

To see an example of Google presentation, you can take a look at this presentation created by a group of teachers today (http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?fs=true&docid=ah4zsdj46b66_578cv4×7#)

Google Presentation is their first attempt at provide users the ability to create slide shows via a web browser, making a presentation application independent. This first attempt does have limitations. There are no transitions and limited templates, although this may be an advantage, since in most of the projects, students can spend more time look rather than content. At this point, you export the presentation into a PowerPoint format.

Advantages to this is that a project can be simultaneously edited. You can import PowerPoints, but there may be other solutions which may be better, such as SlideShare. It does keep a history so you can revert to a previous version.

Like the other collaborative Google Apps, Docs and Spreadsheets, I am guessing that this product is not finished and that additional enhancements will be added in time.

I think that his will be worthy of  use in many of current uses and the ability to collaborate will make this a powerful tool.