Thank you for applying to the Google Teacher Academy at the Googleplex on June 25th. We’ve reviewed all the applications, and we recognize that you are doing some great things. As a result, we’ve placed your name on the Wait List. On Monday, June 9th, we will let you know if there is room to include you. You will have 24 hours to respond to us by the end of the day on Tuesday, June 10th.
The above is the e-mail I received on Thursday evening (Thursday morning, GoogleTime).
So, I’m not one of the 50 Definites, but I’m also not one of the 200+ Definitely Nots. I guess I am pretty pleased! I was not really expecting to get in, mostly due to the poor quality of my 1 minute video once it was uploaded to YouTube / GoogleVideo. And now, here I’ve gotten what I am viewing as honorable mention. Not bad, not bad at all! 🙂
But I still am not in, and thus I wait in In-Between-Land . . .
Some of you already know that this week I submitted my Google Teacher Academy application for this June’s session on the 25th in Mountain View, CA. I was pretty excited, as this is the first time that Google is accepting applications from outside of the immediate area of the GTA, and indeed, outside of the U.S.A. Woo hoo! (I heard about this Google news via the Infinite Thinking Machine Blog, btw. If that blog isn’t in your reader, get on it!)
What an experience for me just to put together the 1 minute required video. Fun, but definitely challenging. For my reflection and for your enjoyment (or perhaps mockery!), here are a few things I learned:
It is impossible for me to put my entire teaching philosophy about Classroom Innovation into 1 minute. Impossible! Perhaps I have too much to say…?
I can definitely type faster than I can write. The screen vids of me inking those memorable quotes across the screen of my tablet didn’t make the cut because I can’t ink three words in less than 9 seconds. But I can type three words in 4 seconds! (Thanks to my university days as a temp, I tell you!)
I have an incredibly talented partner who knows more about making music than I do, even on a computer. 😉 And I promise next time I will not ask him to do the music edits at 11 p.m. on a school night.
I have a lot to learn about using video software, though I have discovered that it doesn’t get much easier than iMovie.
The end of May is not a good time for me to be making movies (exams, report cards, people leaving, etc.). Mental note taken, stored, and written in cyberstone here. Amen. I think this vid would have been much better if I had not had 2398989712 things going on.
The difference in quality from my raw mp4 file (pretty good) to the Google Video / YouTube upload is REMARKABLE. My exported mp4 (using iMovie’s “Expert settings”) looks great — super sharp and clear. Upload to Google Vid / YouTube looks grainy and all around sucky. Anyone have tips on this? (Note that I am new to this kind of thing; most of my contributions to the digital world have happened via written text and photo. Video is a whole new (fun) ballgame.) Sadly, what this means is that the Google Earth portions of my video are not viewable in the way I intended. Wah.
I do not know enough about recording screen shots on video. Need to learn more about this.
And for those who are interested, the software / hardware I used:
“For every nine people who denounce innovation, only one will encourage it. . . . For every nine people who do things the way they have always been done, only one will ever wonder if there is a better way. For every nine people who stand in line in front of a locked building, only one will ever come around and check the back door.
“Our progress as a species rests squarely on the shoulders of that tenth person. The nine are satisfied with things they are told are valuable. Person 10 determines for himself what has value.” -Za Rinpoche and Ashley Nebelsieck, in The Backdoor to Enlightenment(Three Leaves)
The pessimistic side of me wants to say that in schools, the proportion is probably one out of every twenty, or perhaps even higher. But that’s just me being whiny.
about 203,094,820 faculty meetings I’ve been to where one person speaks out about doing something differently, and gets verbally crucified
the feeling I have after I finish a really good yoga session, when I have the most clarity about what I determine as valuable for myself
Questions I have:
Is it in a person’s nature to be that 10th person? Or can one learn to question and be curious?
How long before that 10th person becomes tired of always being “the only one” who’s encouraging innovation, asking if there’s a better way, and going around to the back door? How many times before s/he gives up?
What would happen if the proportions shifted? What if, in a group of 10, there were 4 people who were always asking the questions and finding new ways of doing things? What would that look like?
Hi Adrienne –
Questions I have: