It's All About the Network

Have you seen those Verizon commercials that have hundreds of support people standing behind their wireless phone user? The idea is to let you know that you're not alone, that you've got people behind you to keep you connected. Their slogan - It's all about the network. That's how I felt about MY network this week.

On Tuesday morning I worked with one of our third grade classes. They had just read the book "George Washington's Breakfast" by Jean Fritz. Our idea was to create a little form, asking the world what they ate for breakfast. I opened up a new form in Google Docs and had the kids help write the survey description and questions. Then I posted a link to the form on Twitter and Plurk asking you to show them the power of our network.

The results were practically instantaneous. Within 15 minutes we had a dozen responses. By that evening there were over a hundred. When I checked the next morning there were almost 400! Most were from the US, but we also had responses from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Scotland, Italy, China, Singapore, Korea, and Brazil!

I thought it would be fun to add the responses to a Google Map, so I started copying and pasting what people ate into placemarks. I had to stop after the first 200. I just couldn't keep up with the responses.


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We're still working on what we're going to do with all the data, but if you'd like to share our project with your students, here is a link to our spreadsheet. (As I write this, we're up to 469 responses.)

I'd like to thank all those who contributed to the survey and passed it on to others. The kids had a blast watching the results come in. We were all amazed by the huge response. Our network ROCKS!