by I am a Google School Dropout. I’m actually proud of that fact, and today I’ll tell you why. When I initially received my “exclusive” invitation to take a Google Power Search course for free a week or so ago, I thought it would be a great experience to learn about searching at the great, bended, knee of the Google Gods. When the first class session went live this morning, I aced the Pre-Test and then bottomed out during the subsequent videos. After 10 minutes of interactive foolishness, I dropped the class by quitting the special Google Power Searching Group and removing my email address from future updates.
I thought that Power Searching Course was going to be a knockout of information that only the fast and the keen could comprehend. Boy, was I wrong. The level of sophistication of the teaching is probably around the fifth-grade level — at least that’s the tone and temper of the immersion.
Do I really want to waste an hour with an old man with grey hair pontificating via a an embedded YouTube video while he presents a PowerPoint Slide show? If there was ever a more boring and stereotypical method of turning off students straight off the bat, it is THAT GUY droning on and on at me in monotone through my morning cup of green tea.
I thought this was going to be a dynamic class with interactive animation and sweeping forms of technological web teaching that would redefine the core of search and how methods are quantified, qualified and presented. It was none of that. The course was simply a sit and be blabbed at a bit with a few questions for you to answer after the videos. Yawn. [crying!]
The teaching is not proactive or enticing or searching for creative thinking. There are questions with only ONE answer and if you actually know a different and better way to finish the search task, Google actually punishes you by telling you how wrong you are and why the ordinary and explicit answer is the “correct” one. I didn’t become successful in my life by being ordinary and explicit — and neither did Google!
Google Power Searching is a passive experience that belies the very foundation that Google was founded upon: Fast, quick, smart and best-to-market.
So, did I Fail my Google Power Search Course — or did Google Fail me with lowered content delivery? I wanted to be wowed and I was put to sleep. If there’s a better way to search Google, then I guess it will have to remain Google’s secret locked away in a monotone drone and dead PowerPoint presentations.
I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything of value by becoming a Google School Dropout.
There’s always Bing if I get lonely for learning.
Almost sounds like a Google for Dummies course!
That’s what it felt like, Gordon — but the Dummies books are at least sort of entertaining and humorous!
Seems that you didn’t give it chance and that your ageism didn’t allow you to see the teacher as someone who could offer you something. Maybe you would have reacted better with Britney Spears running the lesson, in 2 minute chunks so that you don’t get bored.
I’m one of the “Old Guys” so I don’t see it as ageism — I see it as Google sending the wrong educational and promotional message: Old Media + Boring Old Guy + Monotone Drone = Old Ideas. Not something new and refreshing — and that’s why I dropped. I took the initial clues about the process, evaluated them, and decided the project was not worth my time.