Students had a great time today learning from Michael, an coder from Google who works on the Gmail team.

Michael told us about growing up in Alabama and how he first got interested in computers.  He said that the 2 subjects he uses most in his job are math (for talking to computers) and language arts (for talking to other people).  Some of his favorite things about his company are:

  • 1 day a week he gets to work on projects that he is interested in, not just his assignments
  • lots of free food
  • well-behaved dogs can go to work!

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As part of his presentation Michael used 7 Google products: Docs Presentations, Google Maps, Google Charts API, Gmail, Gchat, Google Image Search and the Search Engine.

Students are definitely getting more comfortable with visitor interaction.  Each class had tons of suggestions for how to make Gmail better and many questions about life at Google.  Some highlights:

  • “Is your company friendly with Apple?” – Olivia
  • “You should be able to draw pictures for friends in Gmail.” – Augie
  • “Shortcuts to add YouTube videos in email.” – Sophia
  • “Can you transfer email accounts to/from Gmail?” – Nick R.
  • Aranza identified a bug in Gchat that Michael said he will be working to fix.
  • Curtis had an idea for an auto-junk address for your account that could filter advertising.
  • Lysbeth wants to be able to sign into email with a fingerprint scanner.
  • And much much more.

Many thanks to Google’s Michael for his guest lecture today.