Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

30 Innovative Ways To Use Google In Education

As the search engine that’s become its own verb, Google’s success is difficult to frame.

One of the most telling examples of their gravity in search is how few legitimate competitors they have. (Some would say they have none.)

But cataloguing and indexing humanity’s digital wares isn’t easy, especially with an entire cottage industry trying to sabotage the integrity of a search for their own personal gain (among these trends, nefarious Search Engine Optimization).

That leaves education in a sticky place. On one side we have a billion students chomping at the bit for the very information Google provides the pathway to, and on the other side we have a heaving, chaotic digital mass teaming with digital media, social media, and 10,000 new blogs per day.

To provide students with unchecked access to the internet (via Google) creates a sink-or-swim scenario that no longer works in education. To provide too much scaffolding de-authenticates not only the information retrieval process, but ultimately reduces capacity in the students’ digital literacy.