Remarks from a former Google CEO

Some of you are already aware that I took some personal days this past week in order to attend my youngest daughter’s graduation ceremony from Va Tech.  The commencement speaker was Eric Schmidt,  who, for over ten years was the  CEO of Google.  YouTube has made it possible for me to replay those remarks and pass along an abridged version of his address as the subject of this post.  Please keep in mind that I am not copying from a formal printed document, rather I’m transcribing from a speech, therefore the punctuation and phrasing won’t be exactly as it would be had it been prepared for publication.

             …"You're connecting to each other in ways that it was not possible before.  You're using those connections to strengthen invisible ties that hold humanity together.   The connections are what make us human.  They're the things that make  us stronger, ...

If you're awake you're on line, ...you're connected, ...some of you are probably texting right now....Don't take that power for granted.  What you carry with you every day can change the world.  When I was in college, I spent the summers working at Burris Hall in the computer center and the computer center consisted of one computer called an IBM 371-58 and it had a megabit of memory and a  megahertz of processing power, and I was talking to someone the other day and they said "Oh it's a room with a computer,  and I said ‘No, no,  you don't understand, the computer was as big as the room’, ...  and it probably cost around a 10 million dollars.

 Now take a break  from snap chatting and just listen to these numbers, In your phone you probably got 64 or 128 gigabytes of computation for let's say $500 plus or minus,  unsubsidized  That's  20,000 times cheaper and  100,000 times faster, so it's  two trillion times more useful than the computer i used here forty years ago.

Mr. Schmidt pointed out that the commencement address he delivered in 1999 is not on line...

 …because YouTube wasn't invented. And I didn't have a smart phone because they weren't invented, Google was one year old…Amazon was still only a bookstore. Facebook had not been founded.   You couldn't use Twitter, …and, of course, Google Maps  didn't exist, .....So, when you think about it, that's a lot of change, ....[when I was in college] all of our information was what our teachers told us. … now you can know almost everything about everything, .....[just by using]  your smartphone.

If you change the way you approach things,  then you have an opportunity to change the way your life begins.  In other words you chose to live this way… So figure out a way to take advantage of these tools,…  You're the Internet generation, you grew up on line.   You’re the first generation to literally grow up with this as ubiquitous.  It's interesting that I hear lots of people bemoaning this generation, specifically that you all grew up living life [in front of] computer screens always connected to something or someone.  I'm absolutely convinced that these critics are wrong.  The fact that we are now all connected is a blessing.  It's a blessing for safety. It's a blessing for education.  It's a blessing for world peace.  It's a blessing for economic growth.   It's a blessing for your business futures…

 A world's worth of information is perpetually now at your fingertips.  This opens the door to all sorts of interesting questions: How are we going to process all of this data?  … How will you use it?  How will you use it for  good?  How will we find the right balance between letting the data lead us and following our inherent creative and brilliant human intuition….

It is interesting that in the digital age, analysis and interpretation  are even more important than factual knowledge,  ...So here's the deal, …Just because we know so much doesn't mean our problems go away.  The future, doesn't just happen.  …Technology doesn't work on its own.  It's just  a tool.   You're the ones who harness its power.  You're the ones who lead it.  It's in our service and in particular in your service.   It's up to you to know your environment and to use these new tools at your disposal in the smartest and most effective ways possible... A computer is obviously capable of identifying insights…but, the truth is there's plenty we can do and we need to do for ourselves. Intuition, compassion and creativity, these are the things that make us special, ...These are the things we do much better than machines and that define us as humans....

So we're on a cusp of a new and much larger scale of innovation. ...  [Progress will be made in areas such as climate change, fighting cancer, etc…]   But, someone has to make it happen and those people are you.  Computers won't just do this.  It's not going to happen on an auto pilot and it's not going to happen because computers think it's going to happen.  You need to drive it.   You need to make it happen.  ...All  of us are counting on you.   The future that you're building is mine too, ...I need you to do some things; ...I need you to be curious...Ask a lot of questions and go out and try to find the answers.  Don't accept traditional or conventional wisdom.  …When someone says you're thinking too big, say, ‘I don't think I'm thinking big enough.’ 

I thought all of this is a good reminder that technology is a tool which we have to use if we are to connect with today’s digital generation.  Also, teaching this generation higher order thinking skills is far more important than the impartation of facts, after all, students can find all the facts in the world merely by taking their phones out of their pockets.  We need to help them develop the skills for using these facts.

Penzu--Just a Journal

 

I recently saw where a fellow ITRT in another district highly praised “Penzu.com”, a site I wasn’t familiar with.  He stated that it was one of the more heavily used sites by his teachers.  I decided to check it out and upon reading about it, I was puzzled, it seemed to be just another blogging site.  But, after going to the site and using it, I began to see what makes it distinctive—its simplicity and security.

Penzu is very easy to use, even for those who aren’t too computer savvy.  Click here and you’ll see what I mean.  What comes up is a window which looks like an old fashioned sheet of writing paper.

You can immediately start journaling.  By running your mouse across the icons on the top of the paper you’ll find buttons to create a new entry, save, print,  insert a photo, and change the appearance.   All in all though, it is a lot quicker and easier to use than your typical blog.  There are self-apparent reasons why an English teacher  would want their students to journal,  so let’s look at Penzu from a teacher’s perspective. 

Penzu is not set up for classroom use, it is intended for individual use.  To sign up for an account, one does need to have an Email address—if this seems like an insurmountable barrier to student use, see your friendly, local ITRT and we’ll  help you out here.    The creators set Penzu up to have advantages over a paper/pencil journal.  For example,  it can’t be lost or destroyed—it is stored on line (although you can download entries).  One can access their online journal from multiple platforms—iPads, Android devices,  or any internet computer.  My immediate reaction to this was—yes, but the big disadvantage compared to pencil and paper is its vulnerability in the area of privacy.  A quick investigation revealed how wrong I was.  Not only can it be set up so no one except you can access it, but it can also be encrypted with government/military level  encryption, one reviewer called it the “Rambo” of such sites. 

You might be wondering, if it is so private and super-secret, how does it fit into a classroom?  Well, it can be private, but, it can also be shared.  You can Email the entry (anonymously if desired) or you can share a link to the entry.  Comments can be allowed at the author’s discretion. 

One more observation, part of the charm (for me) of Penzu, is its appearance—it looks like a diary I might have kept “back in the day”.  However, that appearance may not have the same appeal to today’s student.  All  in all, I’m impressed with this and site find it an option worth considering for a teacher that wants to have their students do some journaling.

Text Messaging Your Students!

There.  That title should get your attention.  In my last post I promised to review ClassParrot, however, I’m going to break my promise.  ClassParrot couldn’t find a business model that worked and went out of business.  But, their idea was that teachers could increase communication with students and parents through safe and secure texting and I believe they are right on the money about that—well maybe not “money”—how about they were on the “mark”.  ClassParrot would give teachers a certain number of text messages per month, for free, and then charge teachers who wanted unlimited texting.  Perhaps that didn’t work for them because a number of other sites are willing to provide unlimited texting for free.  So, allow me to review three of those sites instead.  Even after going out of business, the ClassParrot site still provides this bit of information—only 22% of Emails get opened, whereas 98% of text messages get opened—now which would you say is a better way to reach students?

 

Here is a quote from a blog by Anna Otto (which you can read in its entirety here):

There are several web-based texting sites that allow you to text students while avoiding the legal risk of exchanging personal contact information with them. You won’t know your students’ cell phone numbers, and they won’t know yours. All of these types of sites let you send messages through their website, some also let you text straight from your phone. They’re great if you’d like to help students remember to study for an upcoming test, remind them to bring in certain supplies, let them know about date and time changes for club/athletic events, and more!

 

Not only am I too cheap to have a smart phone, but, believe it or not, I have texting blocked on my feature phone—I mean I am really a skin flint.  So, perhaps I’m not the best one to be doing this review.  But, here goes….

 

Celly (http://cel.ly/) – as in cell — a cell could be your first block Biology Class, the athletes on a football team, a study group, or the kids going on a particular field trip.  Celly seems to be a wonderful vehicle for organizing protests—it has been used a lot by the occupy Wall Street movement.  I’m not sure how it works or looks on a phone, but, if students go to the Celly website they’ll find they have opportunity to open their own cells or to join up or drop in on hundreds of other cells—not just Occupy Wall Street, but lots of Occupy sites seem  to show up.  This makes the point that you can set up as many cells (or classes) as you like.  You can join Celly and set up cells either on your computer or on your phone—oh, they also have an Android App (no iPad app at this point.)  The easiest way to have students join your cell is to have them send the text “join” to the group and enter the correct code.  You can set up cells: 1) that anyone can join, or 2) anyone who provides a description of themselves of which you approve, or 3) only those who know the password can join.   Once they are in, you do not see their phone number and they do not see yours. 

 

You can then send out group texts from your computer for free.  On your phone, standard text messaging rates apply—but a group text counts as just one text. 

 

Being the cell administrator gives you several options.  You can set things up so:  1) you can text the students but, they cannot reply, or 2) so that they can reply, or 3) so that students also may send out texts to the whole group, or 4) so that students can send out texts “curated” by you to the whole group (meaning if it makes it past your one teacher censorship board it is sent to the group – similar to moderating a blog).  If a student replies to a text with a question, the teacher can then answer that question privately.   Standard messaging rates apply for the students, so you might want to get parental permission for this one.  For those students who may be as frugal as I am and therefore, don’t have texting, replies can also be made through Email. 

 

Of the sites I’m reviewing today, this is the only one where a student can respond to a multiple choice poll and have the answers appear on your website—to be projected on a screen—no, wait, we can’t do that in school—but, the capacity is there.   To assure that your students get plenty of sleep you can shut down the reply capability every night at bedtime.  Celly also allows you to add “hashtags” to texts so that they can be easily filtered and sorted.  Finally, with Celly you can create messages and schedule them to be sent later.

 

Remind 101 (https://www.remind101.com/).  This site is supposed to be the elegantly simple one, and in many ways it is.  You add a class and it creates joining instructions in PDF format which can immediately be printed and distributed.  However, I tried to join a group I created via Email (to see how it worked) and Thunderbird told me my message was not deliverable.   Furthermore, when I tried to schedule a message to be delivered later—something didn’t pop up on my screen allowing me to do so.   To sign up via Email, one needs an Email address.  Remind 101 does have an iPhone/iPad app.

 

Class Pager (https://www.classpager.com/) – this looks and acts a lot like Remind 101—I don’t know which came first, but, one of them obviously viewed the other’s site.  The advantages of Class Pager over Remind—you can set up polls (but not multiple choice ones) and you can respond to students individually.  The disadvantages are that you can only set up one class for free—their business model charges $10/month per additional class and students can’t join via Email—they must have texting to join.

 

In conclusion, if I were to select one of them, it would be Celly.  I’ll grant you it is not as simple to use as the others; however, it seems to work best with my machine, with our filters, and with my restrictions (no Smart phone, etc.)  Now, would I really use it in a classroom?  As a coach or sponsor of an extracurricular activity, I’d definitely use it—after clearing it with my principal first.  As a classroom teacher, I think I’d give it a try, restrict its use to very limited occasions, and see how the students and parents react.  If communication with parents and students is key to classroom success, how can it hurt to try it out?