Why is Google Evil?

Maybe Google is Evil is the wrong verb form -- it's more a question that Google has become evil.

First, and from a practical point of view, it's (now) evil because we turn unthinkingly to it when in fact we would find better, more authoritative information somewhere else, and a lot faster: if it's something for your class, ask your tutor, or look in a book, or go not to a search engine like Google-is-Evil but to a portal like TeachingEnglish.org.uk.

So, to some extent, we've allowed it to become evil.

Apart from that, Google is Evil because it has become so important to businesses. As a result, businesses have stuffed the Internet with junk -- simply so that their websites turn up top in Google (and other search engines). So a lot of what appears "top" in Google is in fact junk. Look carefully at what sites appear in the top 20 or 30 results for any search that is of "commerical value" and you'll see what I mean. How many of those sites exist simply and solely to drive traffic to other sites...? A lot...!

And because Google earns so much of its rapidly increasing revenue (99%, according to some estimates) from advertising, and now has to answer to shareholders, does it care if its results are stuffed with crap? No -- Google is like television. TV stations really don't care that what they broadcast is garbage, so long as their advertising revenue grows.

Also, Google deliberately sets out to pretend not to be Evil: "Do no Evil" is its corporate motto. You have to be deeply suspicious of a company that sets out to dupe its customers in that fashion. It also says that its mission is "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful": the first four words of that make me highly suspicious.

Google is Evil because it steals things from people -- from publishers and from anyone who owns a website, images for example.

Is Micro$oft Evil? Yes. Google is Evil for exactly the same reasons... and one additional reason: it deliberately seeks to con you into thinking that it is not.

"What is Evil?" I read someone saying the other day. "Evil is anything Google decides is Evil". Now that's worrying...!

Why is blogging (not) so cool and innovative?

The question was in fact one of the muddiest points from the June 16 session: "Why is blogging so cool and innovative?"

They're not, is the simple answer to that... It's just that geeks like myself get very enthusiastic about their new toys and I think it's only right to treat what such people say with a healthy dose of scepticism....!

"Cool" and "innovative" are not words I'd apply to blogs and blogging, and I think that even if they were, that would be a very poor reason to use them in the language classroom.

My basic criteria for using any technology in the classroom would be (1) how much time is it going to take up, before, during and after class; and (2) what return am I going to get on my investment -- and more importantly what return are my learners going to get on the investment?

Because blogging is so easy to learn to do (as opposed to say, using an interactive whiteboard, or writing your own multimedia material) and because the return on the investment is high -- those are the reasons why I'd use a blog, not because it's cool.

If you want something that's cool, that has what we might call the "WOW! factor", try an interactive whiteboard. One of my colleagues here at IH uses one quite a lot, and says her teenagers all say "WOW!" or "Cool!" when she plays MP3 files on it, displays the lyrics, blanks out the lyrics and so on...

Blogging is not quite like that, though you could get into its cousin, podcasting, and then they could publish the MP3 files, and wouldn't that be cool!

Blogging has got more to do with creating something from nothing, collectively, and caring about it, and owning it, and belonging to it...

Oh dear, I'm getting over-enthusiastic about it again... And the doctor told me not to!

Of course, you could just get your students to write things on a bit of paper for you, and hand it in... But now that would not be cool -- or even vaguely interesting...

Muddiest points, 16 June

There were various "muddiest points" in today's session regarding blogs and blogging...

Again, for some of these there were already answers on this blog, so I'll point you there for some of them:

How do you set up a blog?
There are lots of providers of blogging services, with Blogger.com being one of the best known. Here's how to set a blog up with Blogger; here's how to set a blog up at Zoomblog, which is what this blog used to use; and here's a comparison of the two.

Note that if you're not that confident with technology, Blogger may prove just slightly easier for you.

If you want a really simple, really basic blog, then an alternative would be Yahoo 360º, for which you'd need a Yahoo account.

How blogging can be useful in English teaching
I'll point you to a previous post to answer the question what can you do with a blog?

More about blogs and blogging
To learn more about the subject, you have further links in the sidebar.

And one last "muddiest point" for today...
Why is blogging so cool and innovative?