Edu-search

Great blog & lesson plan (See link) for a search task based around understanding the templates in wikipedia - bias, needs source, etc. - and writing to address these.

the attitude we take toward the world. To be turned inward, to listen to speech that is only a copy, or reflection, of our own speech, is to keep the universe alone. To free ourselves from that prison — the prison we now call personalization — we need to voyage outward to discover “counter-love,” to hear “original response.” As Frost understood, a true search is as dangerous as it is essential. It’s about breaking the shackles of the self, not tightening them.

There was a time, back when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were young and naive and idealistic, that Google spoke to us with the voice of original response. Now, what Google seeks to give us is copy speech, our own voice returned to us. It’s a great tragedy.

Access to facts and “lower-level” knowledge provides a more fertile ground for higher-level learning. And just because the process of finding such knowledge is simpler doesn’t neuter or de-authenticate the learning; rather it frees up the learner for more important thinking that a computer can’t duplicate.

The image of learning through the time-honored academic survey of dozens of books across a half-dozen floors of a university library is appealing, and Google cannot entirely replace that process. The intellectual serendipity of looking for this but finding that instead is available both in a book and the search bar of your Google Chrome browser. Distraction, evaluation, question revision, and credibility are issues no matter where the information is found.

Online or off, at that point of the research process it’s up to the learning habits of the searcher.

A search engine for creating/curating/exploring metaphors based on keyterms. Returns images "related" to the term for exploring the conceptual space around those terms.

1. Google creates the illusion of accessibility]

2. Google naturally suggests “answers” as stopping points

3. Being linear, Google obscures the interdependence of information (Especially those that seem conflicting.)

10 Strategies To Encourage Digital Natives To Value Information

It sounds counter-intuitive, but periodically create information-scarce circumstances that force students to function without it.Illuminate—or have them illuminate—the research process itself.Do entire projects where the point is not the information, but its utility.Use think-alouds to model the thinking process during research.Create single-source research assignments where students have to do more with less.Change the assignment mid-course by demanding new resources other than those most accessible.Create the need for “open-ended data” they can’t possibly Google.Have them create a visual metaphor, analogy, or concept map before and after the research process that demonstrates the role that Google, and Google-sourced information, played.Have students create a concept-map or other clever characterization for the limits of Google (or any other search engine).Use a balance of both post primary and secondary sources.

This kind of extra-smartness is coming to people. Effectively, people are about 20 IQ points smarter now because of Google Search and Maps. They don’t give Google credit for it, which is fine; they think they’re smarter, because they can rely on these tools. It’s one reason they get so upset if the tools are inaccurate or let them down. They feel like a fifth of their brain has been taken out.