In this chapter, Chapter 5, the first section that I came across that caught my attention was the section is called 'Search Engines and How They Work'. It goes to show how much time has changed since I was in elementary school to now, while I'm in college. When I had to research subjects, they wouldn't show us how to use Google or Yahoo!, I was taught on how to use an encylopedia. Now a days, I'm sure if you were to ask an elementary student, they probably wouldn't know what I was talking about or if they did, they would probably only know the internet version versus the book version. But I will say using the internet to research or even ask a simple question like how to spell a certain word, is much faster and easier. The internet is at your fingertips at the comfort of your own home compared to having to travel to a library and find exactly what you're looking for. The internet does it right for you and it doesn't get any easier than that!
The next section I read was 'Strategies for Conducting Effective Searches with Students'. They mention if someone researches a question, for example, if they ask, "why do vocanoes form near oceans?", on Google, the internet can't differentiate who asked it - a student or an adult. So when you ask a question as simple as that, tons of websites pop up that might be related to the topic your researching. So a way to make it more efficient for teachers, creaters are trying to create a search engine that will minimize the websites and only give approiate websites for the approiate audience. I think that if this does happen, it would make it much better for teachers or even us, college students, so we don't have to go through so many websites to find the right information that we need.
The last section I read that caught my attention was the section called 'Evaluating Online Information'. A lot of the information you read online could be opinions from someone else, or it could actually be facts. You have to be very careful what you read and which website you get it from. In this section, it talks about misinformation, malinformation, messed-up information, and mostly useless information. Some of the data could be out of date or incomplete in a way. So while doing a research project or just typing a question in Google, you have to make sure your resources are reliable before you can move on.
Resources
- Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Good experimentation with bubbl.us - a great mind-mapping tool. I wonder if search engines can really discriminate among various audiences...and then would we even need to 'think'? I think I would prefer to teach students how to think and evaluate ... even if it is a bit more difficult and/or time consuming as I don't want to give up my thinking skills!! :)
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