I’ve just finished reading Michelle Martin‘s latest post, A Week Without Google, on her Bamboo Project Blog.
My heart darn near skipped a beat at the thought of it. Could you imagine it? No gmail, gchat, gtalk, google calendar, google docs, google maps, google search, google earth, google alerts, no blogger, and alas no iGoogle – no google anything! And this is an actual assignment for Michelle’s daughter to do for her New Media Research class. And her assignment includes no YouTube either!!
Oh my! Could I do it? Um … NOPE. Not a chance! And then it dawned on me just how reliant I’ve become on one company’s products. I hadn’t meant to, I didn’t do it deliberately and I certainly didn’t realise it – til now. I can’t think of any other aspect of my life (even financially) where I’ve literally put all my “eggs in one basket.”
How many Google products do you rely on? All the ones I use religiously (that’s on a day to day basis) are listed in the first paragraph. I am so dependent on Google. I really need to think seriously about how to manage if Google “went down” (as she’s frantically touching wood so that doesn’t happen)! Over the past week our school server has been hit with a virus that no one has the fix for. Work with the internet in the classroom has all but ground to a halt. Today my students alternated between reading their books and writing with a pencil while we waited patiently for pages on our blog to load. At least we had the books and pencils as an alternative. But that’s my point really. What alternative do I have for all the google apps I use?
What about you? Could you go a week without google? Are all your eggs in one basket too?
OK…I’ll go a week for Screen Free week. But allow me to get on a computer and tell me I can’t use any of Google’s products….pure torture. Although a great assignment. Glad I’m not in school.
Yeah, I had a mini heart attack too! I’m actually considering trying going without Google for a week and blogging about the experience. Not sure I could, unless I was on vacation or something. This is like a creativity assignment I did where I wasn’t allowed to READ for a week! Can you imagine?
Hi! I am a technology assistant at Anderson Elementary School in Wilmington, North Carolina in the United States. We are looking for a school to Skype with. We are discussing diversity and culture with our K-5 students. Would you have any students willing to Skype with one of our classes?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Gina Graziani
I understand the panic. I recently heard that Google is going to stop supporting its Google Notebook, which I have become accustomed to-not to mention have a great amount of information, links, etc. in. It has many features I have yet to find in other programs, of which there are many. I have been scrambling to find a replacement that provides what I am used to. And what would be even better yet, would allow for importing the existing data.
Lesson learned..I guess it’s always best to diversify. Don’t get me wrong, Google has great aps, but there is much, much more out there. One of my greatest fears would be…what if Google decided they should start charging $$ for some of these aps? Then we’d all be up a creek.
I’ve switched from Google Notebook to Zoho Notebook – it’s got a cool import from Google Notebooks – click a button and Zoho does it for you! I don’t like it as much as I loved Google Notebook but as alternatives go …. it’s not bad!
My obvious choice is Adobe Buzzword.
https://buzzword.acrobat.com/#o
You can create and do lots of the things Google Docs do with a few extras thrown in.
How ironic that I would read your post just after I started the migration of my students from online journals on Wikispaces to blogs on Blogger. And we use Gmail, Docs, and Calendar. When a product works, it sells (especially when it is free).