Planet Google

Innovation and creativity are two qualities that fascinate me because they are two traits that I desire to improve in my own life. Starbucks, Apple, and Google are three companies which have amazing quantities of creativity and innovation. I have determined to take a closer look at these companies to try and find out the source of their creativity, innovation, and industry perception.

I began my quest by examining Google through the reading of Planet Google by Randall Stross (2008, Free Press) during my multi-leg, multi-day trip to and from Kosovo (see my previous post for an explanation of what I was doing there!). Stross has an engaging writing style and includes lots of interesting inside information about the corporate culture at Google; however he does suffer from a tendency to jump from one topic to the next. As long as you can keep more than one story line going in your head, you’ll be fine!

Stross’ book chronicles Google’s unexpected and surprising rise to search engine dominance, and the growing PR challenges related to privacy concerns and capitalization on its assets. The first lesson on creativity and innovation that I gleaned from Google is to dream big. From the very beginning, the goal of Sergey Brin and Larry Page was to “organize the world’s information.” As two post doctoral students with very little experience or capital, this was an absolutely audacious goal. Their quest to organize information is the key mission of Google and has guided its development ever since. Several top Googlers have indicated that it will take 300 years for Google to organize every piece of information in the world. No one really knows how accurate this estimate is or whether Google is providing the 300 year number as a serious estimate, but no one doubts that they will do their best to get the job done.

Google founders Page and Brin view everything as a mathematical problem. This stems from their extensive training as computer programmers (both have doctorate degrees in this field). The corporate culture at Google requires unbelievable problem solving skills which is one of the reasons that advanced degrees are strongly encourage and in many cases required. Employees are encourage to identify and solve problems that interest them—this has led to the development of some of Google’s most promising products—e-mail and the Google chrome web browser for example. The lesson here is to never shy away from a challenge. The human and financial resources at Google seem to be enough to solve virtually any problem.

The third and final lesson that I gleaned from Stross’ book is to adjust and adapt on the fly. Google’s corporate policy is to “publish now, fix later.” Almost all of its products (Google docs, e-mail, chrome) emerged with the beta tag still attached. Google does not wait to work out all of the details and kinks before introducing its products on a wide scale. Google views its users as partners with them in developing their products. Users submit feedback and give suggestions that help the engineers create useful, dynamic products. Getting products out into the market quickly also enables Google to stay ahead of its competitors.  The digital landscape is a wild roller coaster and only those companies which can stay ahead of customer demands will survive. So far, Google has been able to do just that.

Google’s corporate culture is different from that of any company I have heard of. Employees are encouraged to dream big, required to be problem solvers, and forced to adapt on the fly. These three qualities have, helped to make an information superpower. 

Education in Kosovo: A New Perspective

This blog has been quiet for a while because I have been doing some educational work with the people of Kosovo. My school has partnered with an American woman living in Kosovo who is building the Kosovo Leadership Academy, a private schools whose mission will be to educate the next generation of leaders for this struggling nation. Two other teachers and myself were sent to visit and train a group of 11 teachers on effective instructional practices. 

As our week progressed, we gained a fairly clear picture of the state of the educational system in this new country and there is really only one word to describe it: bad. Schools are unbelievably poor, the teachers are woefully trained, and corruption is widespread. Facilities are so limited that students attend school in three shifts: morning, mid-day, and afternoon. Each class is only 40 minutes long and not every subject is taught every day. One principle explained to us that his school can't test students because they didn't have a copier. Despite his repeated requests to the ministry of education, no copier has been provided for teachers to run off worksheets and tests. 

The state of the educational system in Kosovo is not a reflection of the people. The Albanians are wonderfully warm and hospitable. Those who have been educated elsewhere are very intelligent. The teachers that I spent time with had a great desire to reach students. They were hungry to improve their teaching skills. The disarray of the educational system is due to several generations of war and conflict with Serbia. Many years of communism also stripped the older generation of the ability to think critically. Today's teachers were educated in basements and back alleyways because school was outlawed. Today's teen-agers were young children when the Serbians, under their leader Slobodan Milosevic, systematically killed many of the Albanian men. The memory and trauma of the late 1990's has significantly impacted this generation. 

Great excitement and hope is building for the new generation, especially for the students who are currently in first grade. These students are known as the "freedom class" because they are the first group of students to be educated after the independence of Kosovo. It is this generation which will make or break Kosovo. 

Visiting a foreign country always teaches me something about my own country. Despite our complaints and aggravations about the American education system, we should be very grateful for how good we have it. Educational technology is non-existent in Kosovo; they don't even have a copier! The next time I am tempted to complain about how hard teacher is, I'm going to look at this picture and remember the struggles and challenges of the teachers in Kosovo. 

For complete details about my trip to Kosovo including video of Kosovo's first day of independence (Feb. 17) and of the Kosovo schools, please visit my travel blog. 

The effects of podcasting

The chemistry teacher in the classroom next to me passed on an interesting article that she found in the Journal of College Science Teachers. The title of the article is "Analysis of Students' downloading of Online Audio Lecture Recordings in a Large Biology Lecture Course." The article is available (PDF) directly from the Author, Brian T. White.

The article was of interest to me because I am currently working on creating podcasts which I hope will help my students better understand the labs that we do in class. It is my intention that they watch my video podcasts before class so that they are familiar with the procedures needed in the lab. There has been lots of hype surrounding podcasts, but this is the only quantitative research that I have seen that addresses the benefits of using podcasts to enhance learning. Although the research conducted by White was done in a college setting, the implications will apply to a high school setting as well. 

The purpose of this small study (185 students) was to determine how college students use lecture podcast and to determine if the availability of podcast decreased lecture attendance. White concluded that most students used the podcasts to prepare for exams and did not use them to prepare for class or to review after class. No significant link was found between the number of weekly podcast downloads and lecture attendance. 

For me, these results suggest that my students may not be as likely to listen to and watch my podcasts before they attend class, as I have intended. They are more likely to use them to review before a test. As attendance in high school is compulsory, I won't have to worry about students skipping class! 

White's article helps separate the hype of podcasting from the benefits of the technology. Technology shouldn't be use simply because it is available, it should be used because it serves a need and enhances student learning. More research on podcasting will help determine how effective this technology is in helping students learn.