Stephen’s Untold Stories

A while back I got a comment here from one of the editors of the Official Google Documents Blog. She asked if I could put something together to include on their blog. I’m glad to report that my contribution went live today.

Here is a link to my post over there.

Does this mean I’m famous? Or maybe infamous?

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

This would be worth a look for those of you working in school systems.

Yes, you can use different variations of the Google home page for your searching preferences.

• Google Latin
• Elmer Fudd Version
• Klingon Version
• Hacker Interface

And my personal favorite, the Swedish Chef version.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

The Google home page has turned black for some of us today in honor of Earth Hour.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I had no idea that Yahoo actually was one of the early investors in Google. Here is a great article about that whole situation.

Almost eight years ago, Yahoo decided to lend a little startup a helping hand, featuring its search technology on the Yahoo home page and giving it money at a critical juncture.

In cutthroat Silicon Valley, no good deed goes unpunished.

The startup was Google, and Yahoo’s generosity helped launch the most formidable competitor it had ever encountered. Now facing a takeover attempt by Microsoft, Yahoo is coming to terms with the punishing consequences of its complex relationship with Google, including a futile attempt to copy Google’s extraordinarily profitable advertising model at significant cost to Yahoo’s own business.

When Google was still a private company, it sent its financial statements to Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale like clockwork. Google had to because Yahoo was one of its earliest investors.

The statements showed the incredible growth of Google’s search advertising business, with sales more than doubling from quarter to quarter.

But Yahoo executives didn’t focus on the money; they were interested in how much traffic was being driven by search, recalled Ellen Siminoff, an executive who joined Yahoo in 1996.

In 2000, Yahoo agreed to use and promote Google, which it touted as “the best search engine on the Internet.” Google co-founder Larry Page described the pact as a “major milestone.”

The following year, Yahoo was even more generous, paying Google $7.2 million for its services (Google in turn paid Yahoo $1.1 million for promotional help). Google desperately needed the money, which helped push it into the black for the entire year.

n 2002, Yahoo paid Google $13.2 million, equivalent to more than a quarter of Yahoo’s annual profit of $43 million. The sum, however, meant less to Google, which had blown past its benefactor with an annual profit of about $100 million.

But the price of coddling Google would be much higher, as Yahoo soon discovered.

Complete article here

The good folks over at Google Docs want your input!

Here is the survey you can use. And yes, it’s a form that was created using Google Spreadsheets.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I’ve been using Google Documents for a while now, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Recently I tried Microsoft’s Office Live and I really like what I see so far. I could see both of these as quite useful for schools.  The following link will give you a good comparison.

• Office Live Workspace vs Google Docs: Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Thanks to Rick for the reminder!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Here is another perfect use for Google Docs.

I don’t usually care where kids work. When they are on the computers we have access to, they used to most often use Word and then email things back and forth to home every night so that they could continue working. This was more difficult if they didn’t have Word at home. It invovled a process of cutting and pasting and fixing formatting errors each time they did this.

But over the last few months, I’ve noticed the kids in my class have made a dramatic move to Google docs. Using Google docs they can work at school or at home much more easily. But they are moving there for other reasons as well, the biggest one being that they can simply share their work with me and with other kids in the class. For example, my students are currently writing a short, one page essay on a topic of their choice to do with life in ancient Egypt. They’ve chosen a wide variety of topics ranging from the Nile to make - up and dress, boats, farming techniques, and much more. I keep the formal essays that they need to write short, being much more interested in having students learn to write a set of coherent paragraphs and an interesting introduction and conclusion than I am in quantity. It’s not hard to write lots. It’s hard to write well.

But with these pieces, these students are more often sharing them with me so that I can help them with revisions and specific paragraphs. They will share their document with me so that I can write suggestions and ideas for them and then save them for them. The same is true among each other. As students have been working on topics that may occasionally overlap (”What kind of clothing did the farmers wear?”) students are sharing their pieces with each other. I don’t consider this to be wrong or plagiarism of any sort. I consider this to be knowledge networking and making use of the resources in the classroom. It’s called learning from each other.

Link to article

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I have used Google Docs several times in grad school for project collaboration, and I can’t sing its praises enough. Here is a great way to get your students involved with this amazing tool.

• Writing a Book in Google Docs

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

One of their best!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Mashable has a great list of ways to integrate these two great technologies.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

This is very helpful. When you are ready to publish a presentation, click on the “Publish” link on the right and Google gives you the embed code for your web page.

Here is an example.