I am becoming more of a fan of Google all the time. I think they create opportunities for people. They support coders with projects, one of these being a favourite of mine, Blender. If you spend some time on Google Code there is a wealth of interesting development going on in all areas of IT. The Pyrit project is of interest to me as this is attempting to provide tools to recover WPA and WPA2 preshared keys using modern day computing power inheritant in Graphics cards.
Further digging around Google Code showcases masses of Open Source Software hosted by Google giving people opportunities to share what they are trying to achieve.

Google also produces great software. I have talked about Google Apps before and although there are some quirks (contact sharing and handling is awful!) it is a good solution after careful consideration of the end goals. I have been working closely with a few local schools in an attempt to show how the power of Open Source Software can engage students. One of these programs is Google Sketchup, an wonderful 3d modelling program with a very intutitive interface.

As part of a study, I have been working with some Year 2 children, around 7 years old. This was to see how well children of this age can adapt to interfaces and the results were amazing. They had no trouble creating 3D shapes and even went as far as texturing objects to represent the real world. After a brief intro to two of the main tools we set them off to build a house and see the results. Virtually every child managed to produce something that represented their initial idea, and although some were better than others, overall the results backed up my thoughts regarding ICT curriculum. We need to push them as it has become natural for them to interact with tools most adults struggle to comprehend. They have grown up embedded into a world of interface and interaction with systems and they embrace this. Until we really start pusing the boundaries and using tools like Sketchup and the wealth of other tools available to us, the system will be bottom heavy, with learning focused on Microsoft Word and entry level IT abilities that the children already have. In a world of Facebook and Twitter and Social Networking, they have learned to use these tools often in their own time. We now need to look at how we can build on these existing skills to develop relevant directions for learning IT today.

Google Sketchup is free to use and free to share so I encourage you to download this and enjoy it.