Learning not to Teach the Impractical

Disappointing lesson today.

The goal was to help all 13 of my students set up their own Google accounts. From there, I'd show them the ropes on Gmail, and in later lessons, Google Docs. I was especially excited about the latter; I think cloud-based office applications are fantastic, and I was really looking forward to teaching these guys how to use Google Docs' word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs - and most of all, Google's custom 'forms creator.'

Unfortunately - and not for the first time - Google blocked us at every turn when we tried to create the accounts. This is not exactly new territory for me. I never found Google to be obstructive back home in the States, but it really feels like the company is reluctant to offer new accounts to people living in Malawi. That could be unfair - I suppose there could be any number of reasons, it's not necessarily based on our physical location - but the fact remains that maybe 80% of the time when I'm trying to create a new Google account here in Malawi, I've been rebuffed in one way or another. I've never had this problem when creating accounts on other websites here.

Well, even a setback can be an opportunity for a lesson. I mentioned to my group that there are plenty of other e-mail hosting websites, wrote a few URLs on the board, and encouraged them to pick one. Most tried Yahoo. A couple of people went for Windows Live. None of them had any problems creating their accounts on these websites, and they're all happily sending emails back and forth as I type this.

The overarching lesson for me is that, no matter how nice my vision of teaching Google Docs may have been, it simply was not realistic. In the end, it is a waste of their time (and mine) teaching them to use one set of tools that I can't guarantee they'll have access to, when I could use that same lesson time to teach them something I know they'll be able to use.

I'm keeping my own Google account, of course. Using a Google account is not the problem; creating one is. So, I'll continue using Gmail, Reader, Docs, and Blogger, but until I'm convinced that Google will stop randomly blocking the creation of new accounts in Malawi, I'm not going to bother encouraging people here to sign up.