"Today, teachers like you are using technology in innovative ways to help students build knowledge. You play a critical role in breaking down the barriers between people and information, and we support your efforts to empower your students. We're reaching out to you as a way to bolster that support and explore how we can work together."
Google is turning its attention to the use of its services by teachers, and has launched Google For Educators, a Google Teacher Newsletter (from which the above extract is taken, and to which several thousand people had signed up within hours of its launch), and a pilot Google Teacher Academy, through which a group of 50 (North California only) teachers can become "Google Certified".
Google for Educators provides links to brief, somewhat school-focused, overviews of 12 Google products, which between them provide a pretty comprehensive (mainly) web based learning environment. (Google Earth and SketchUp require the download and installation of quite heavyweight applications.) Each product page calls for users to submit examples of successful "lessons" developed using the product in question, and in some cases the product page contains such examples, and other support resources. Products to pay particular attention to include:
- Docs and Spreadsheets (based partly around Writely that Google acquired earlier this year, but now with a Google look and feel);
- SketchUp (a 3D modelling application);
- Google Apps (enabling an organisation to provide learners and staff with email addresses and Google Calendar running under the organisation's own domain, but without the overhead of running any servers, spam filtering etc).
On the face of it Google seems to be weighing in to win the hearts and minds of teachers and school pupils, with a strong emphasis on giving learners interesting and creative things to do with powerful applications (that are not Microsoft's), and that are often strongly oriented towards supporting collaborative activity. But given Google's weight, funds, and influence, the initiative could be pretty destabilising (and not necessarily in a bad way) of national and regional efforts to promote e-learning. Where, for example, will top down initiatives like the UK's Curriculum Online - under which schools get given funds to spend with multimedia content providers - sit in relation to Google for Educators? How will institutional authentication, authorization, and accounting, and "single sign-on" regimes sit alongside Google's if large numbers of learners and teachers need to sign in to Google's products for their learning and teaching? Is this all really just another step towards back-door privatisation of the public sphere, and US commercial hegemony of culture?
I do not know the answers to these (pompous!?) questions; but I am certain that a lot of changes are taking place "out there", that are completely beyond the control of the people running institutions and Government agencies, and setting educational policy and strategy; and that these changes will have as big an impact on the behaviour of learners and teachers as has already been brought about by simple web search and by Wikipedia.
Other relevant posts include:
- Free stuff in a commercial world, a Guest Contribution by Mark Bethelemy;
- Using Blogger to get teachers started with e-learning, a Guest Contribution from Keith Burnett.
Comments