An Open Letter to Google

Dear Google,
It's been four months since you broke my heart. Since you rejected my application to the Google Teachers Academy. I've gone through my dark days of isolation and despair, but I can now see a slim light of recovery peering through the curtains.

Rejection is always hard, whether from that little blonde-haired girl I knew in 4th grade, czarist and delusional Co-Op Boards, or even from a global, communications titan, for whom rejection is merely a means of clearing a path towards global domination.

I've gotten over the hostility that comes with scorn and humiliation. I have reined in that urge to barrel into a Kelly Clarkson-type rampage. And I have resumed my responsibilities as an educator which include sharing Google resources for school and home. Recently, I convened staff and shared a few tricks that can be performed in the Google search window. For instance,

• solve a math problem ex: 270 divided by 9
• get the weather ex: weather scarsdale, ny
• currency conversion ex: peso to us dollar or 20 dollars to yen
  
• world time ex: time in bangkok
• area/zip code ex: area code in omaha, ne
• movie times ex: slumdog millionaire 10583 or movie listings 10583
• definitions ex: define: mercurial
  

And this is just a sliver of the many things you can offer. In the coming weeks, I'll share more tips. Although, I'll have to admit I cringe at the irony. I mean, here I am showing teachers what wonderful things they can do with Google, things that I had to research independently, which would have been unnecessary if you, Google, only paid closer attention to my application and teaching philosophy video, for which I spent hours upon hours of soul searching in seeking your approval and the opportunity to receive personal tutelage from your experts.

Perhaps I was unrealistically hopeful or misguided. To have given you so much of my heart and soul... and for what? I mean really, who do you think you are? Oh sure... "Hi! My name is Google. Yes, it's true. I'm so globally indispensable, my name's a verb. Have you met my friend Photoshop? We're actually leaving this party. On our way to a party about global conquest. Bill Gates. Warren Buffet. Oprah. They'll all be there."

Wow. Ok. So maybe I'm not completely over the rejection.

Reinventing the Wheel

When I hear the phrase "Why reinvent the wheel?" it's often used to end discussion. It is the gavel that closes a hearing, a metaphor that has become a foregone conclusion implying that what has been done before should continue to be done, lest we waste valuable time and energy attempting to create something that is new, but inferior compared with the original.

And while people may take a solution that is tried and true, then build upon this foundation to make something better, my concern is that this phrase is too often used as a device to deny creative pursuits.

Yes, there is expedience and often sound judgment in relying on the wheel and not having to remake it, but tradition should not stand in the way of adaptation when situations warrant. Technology has changed so much of how we engage in daily activities, while shaping the routines and perspectives of our children, that it stands to reason that so many of the wheels in our lives are now being reinvented because new creative and functional solutions are within reach.

Today's children must be challenged to innovate and find imaginative solutions to problems in school and out. The time has come to create a generation of problem solvers who strive to think differently.

It has been more than 5,000 years since the wheel was first used on Mesopatamian chariots and about 40 years since the Flintstones left prime time. Shouldn't we be ready to reinvent a few wheels in our lives by now?

So from here on, when I hear the phrase "Why reinvent the wheel?" I propose "Why drive, when you can fly?"