Author: grabe

What Google Must Know About Me

I use a couple of portal pages (iGoogle and NetVibes). I set these as the default home page for my different browsers on my different computers. When I connect, I start from the same place and have access to a list of web links, RSS feeds, calendar, etc.

One component of the iGoogle page is web history. At this point, I can explore the searches I have conducted since June from this page and ask Google to offer me summaries of my activities.

Google Search History

For example, I think it is fair to conclude that I spend a lot of my time in the evening online.

Google Search History

On June 6, it looks like I was trying to figure out what people had to say about evaluating student blog posts.

It is hard to know what to think about this kind of thing. It is kind of interesting, but it is also kind of creepy.

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Popularity of Social Networking Sites

Richard McManus, Read/Write blog, offers some recent statistics on the popularity of social networking sites. For example, 17% of the 2.6 million Facebook users are < 18 years old. Let me get my calculator – 442,000 kids are on Facebook alone. MySpace has a substantial lead in attracting the younger set. More than 2 million individuals under 18 have MySpace accounts.

They may not be able to access from their schools, but they are connecting from somewhere.

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You are running out of time – my fault

Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, has generated a series of instructional videos for Atomic Learning on Web 2.0 topics.

The videos are FREE during the month of November.

It looks like many of the tutorials are focused on the development of a personal portal (NetVibes – see my own analysis of personal portals).

Sorry, it took me so long to get this information out.

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Two Million MInutes

Check out this link – TwoMillionMinutes. The site offers information about an upcoming documentary contrasting the K-12 educational experience in China, India, and the USA. Judging from the trailer, the intent is to illustrate through the lives of 6 young people just how far behind US education is in preparing students for the reality of global competition.

The opinion of experts expressed in the trailer are very similar to our own personal observations following our visit to China.

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Google For Educators

Google for Educators was a new find for me. I have no idea how long this site has been around. The About page was not working so I am guessing the site is relatively new.

Google For Educators is intended as a portal for K-12 educators. The site suggests educational applications for Google Tools (e.g., use Google Docs for process writing activities, Google maps to indicate where famous historical pictures were taken) and a discussion area in which teachers can reply to Google suggestions and offer other comments.

The site had nearly 2000 “members” when I visited. Google has the draw and resources to create the critical mass likely to make this a successful participatory site.

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Google OpenSocial

This is a little geeky, but the topic has been in the tech news a lot lately. Google is offering a new opportunity to social site developers by making its new OpenSocial APIs available. This link also offers a video that explains more about the new Google resources.

Some see this is as counter move to the growing popularity of existing social environments (Facebook).

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