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Has anyone else found themselves saying this lately? If someone asks me a question, and I don’t know the answer (they’re usually after a quote from the latest episode of Angry Boys), I find myself giving out this piece of advice: just Google it! I think that Google needs to think of somehow copyrighting that phrase; they could add an extra pile of money to their already growing fortune.Anyway, I digress. As silly as the above comments may seem, when we think of ways to source information from the web, we think search engines. And while there are many search engines available, I always seem to keep coming back to the one: Google. It is my homepage, I refer to it in everyday conversations, and I use it for everything!
I wonder if this sounds familiar. Need to find a restaurant for dinner tonight? Google it! Just have to download that song I heard on the radio but cannot remember the name? Google it! Want to find some articles for your latest assignment? Google it! I think you get the picture.
The joys of a search engine are that it will usually find the website you are looking for in the first couple of hits. The downside: searches can bring up a lot of rubbish. And this is where the need for information literacy, sometimes referred to a critical literacy, kicks in.
Information Literacy
So, what exactly does this mean for those of us using the internet as a source of information? In a nutshell- not believing everything you read from an internet source, in a chat room or on a Facebook page. You have the ability to weed out the irrelevant information and can recognise signs to look for when something looks a little fishy.
Information literacy (when applying it in an online context) means the following:
• Analyse a website- don’t just take it at face value
• Check the source and where the website is hosted
• Ask yourself- does the information provided address what I want to know?
• Understand the context within which the information is written or presented
• Check for basic grammar, correct spelling and proper use of language
The children today begin to use, play and learn with technology from a younger age. Therefore, it reasons that we should then begin to teach students about critical literacy earlier. As they say, the earlier the better. If children are being exposed to and using search engines and websites to gather information, then we need to be teaching them how to extract information that is credible. We need to teach them how to critically literate.
Check out these links for examples of seemingly legitimate websites:
In The Classroom
If students are equipped with the ability to critical analyse sources of information, there is no reason why they cannot use the mainstream search engines, for example Google and Bing. However, there are search engines designed specifically for use by students in a classroom setting. Some search engines only search relevant topic information while other engines allow a student to control the search terms.
I have listed some example of search engines I feel will be the most useful in the classroom:
This search engines allows students to control the search terms.
This search engine only searches political material. Why search everything that is available on the web when you only need to search what is relevant?
3. Quintura
This presents the information in a different form. Instead of list the results as other search engines do, it arranges the hits in the form of word cloud. This is a great resource for the students to use, especially if they are visual learners.
4. Tag Galaxy
An extremely sophisticated product, which is essentially a Flickr search engine. Bonus: all the pictures on this website can be used freely as they are under a creative commons license.
5. Roll Yo
This website is the way of the future. Essentially, you can create your own search engine. Wow. Web 3.0 right here.
The bottom line is that technology is (mostly) being embraced for use in the classroom. This means students will be exposed to all sorts of information and sources while they are online. Teachers and parents can only do so much to filter certain information. Ultimately, the onus is on the reader to ensure that he/she is equipped with the skills to take in the information that is required and sift out the debris.
The Future
What does the future hold for these search engines? The researchers and the experts in the field are predicting that search engines are on the way out. Instead, the computer will work for the user. The information will be bought directly from the source to you. Anyone else scared by that? I was a little off put when I realised that companies like Google data mine. They collect information on the searcCspan style="font-size: smd build a profile on each and every one of us. Imagine that multiple times over. That is the future we face. And the future already has a name. It is known as Web 3.0
2 comments:
This is a great post, where you make lots of important points (and offer some valid warnings about web 3.0). I suspect the future will be more about the coexistence of search and automatic filtering, rather than the latter completely overtaking the former - but it may be that search engines themselves act more and more like filters. In fact that's already happening.
That's one reason it's useful to use search services other than Google, and to introduce students to these.
Btw, it's good to see that you've linked to the source of your image, but you need to make sure you have permission to reproduce it. Is it under a CC licence or in the public domain? To be safe in your use of images, you need to have both copyright permission AND an attribution/link.
Thanks for your post Mark. I will look into my images and see if they have CC, if not, I will have to find something else!
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