The 6th grade has been learning about world-changing companies for a couple of weeks now.

We’ve got in depth with the history of Seattle native Bill Gates and learned about how he hacked his way from middle-school mischief maker to Harvard and then beyond.  We followed his empire as it moved from the early days in New Mexico back to Washington state, and how Microsoft has weathered competition to become a worldwide brand with significant market shares in gaming, search, software and hardware.

Today we talked about 2 Stanford guys who changed the way search engines rank websites to help us find what we are looking for.  Their project (called BackRub) became more than just a company…Google is a verb and a website that millions of people use everyday.  We spoke of how Google has tried to compete in various web endeavors that have failed (Google Video, Google Pages, Orkut), and how they’ve bought other companies that do things well (YouTube, KeyHole, JotSpot).

When asked who the people and companies that will make it huge in the next few years will be, students responded with an enthusiastic “we are!”

As part of these conversations, we’ve been using online maps and stock charts to illustrate concepts and we’ve been practicing our listening and participation skills in preparation for the guest speakers that will start sharing their technology experiences next week.