Our ETL501 subject guide suggests:

As the school’s information professional, the TL is often seen as the school’s ‘Internet expert’. (Herring, 2008, p. 14)

and asks us to increase our knowledge of search engines so I thought I’d blog my way through some of them to get to know them better. I am probably as guilty as the next person of being highly dependent on Google to conduct searches because it is familiar and ‘comfortable’.

Our course wants us to evaluate the effectiveness of the search engines and recommends:

An effective search strategy is one that is based on the purpose and the need of the searcher. (Herring, 2004, p.31) (italics are mine)

but I’ll get to serious evaluation later. First I think I need to get to know the features of each search engine and the ‘feel’ of them before I can make judgements.

I’m starting with the single search engines then I’ll move to the meta search engines. First off the mark is Yahoo!7 – the Australian version of Yahoo!

When I first opened it, I felt like I was looking at a cross between a shopping centre and a celeb gossip magazine. That’s why I’d always avoided it in the past and never recommended it to students. But I entered my trial keywords (global warming) and hit enter.

At the top of the results page I’m offered the option of searching: 1/ the Web; 2/Australia; 3/ New Zealand so that’s a plus – students can narrow down the results to obtain relevant information for our area. The result page also offered lots of search suggestions under:

Also try:

• global warming australia
• causes of global warming
• effects of global warming
• global warming articles
• al gore global warming

When I hit ‘more’ it also offered concept categories to explore, all relevant to global warming. Eg.

• Climate Change
• greenhouse gases
• the greenhouse effect
• carbon dioxide

• fossil fuels
• emissions
• atmosphere
• Methane

Very handy for students as well.

The original search brought up 229,000,000 hits and after this figure at the top of the page I noticed their ‘about this page’ hyperlink so I clicked it. More useful info!

On the ‘About” page I found out there is an ad-free, dedicated Yahoo! search start page. Nothing on it but the search box and logo. I also learned that Yahoo! has lots more web search options than I’d realised (click on “More>>” just above the search box). Many are the same as Google (news, images, maps), others of interest were:

• directory – which is a subject-based and human-edited website guide (Google also has this feature, you just never hear of it). Using this feature and my keywords, my search resulted in 2,178 sites, all of much higher quality (authority-wise). The results also indicate categories (eg. Category: Global Warming > Opposing Views, Category: Columns and Columnists)
• local – a guide to local businesses (didn’t bring up any results for ‘global warming’ but could be of use for other searches)
• Answers – where you can ask real people, real questions (who these people are who answer, of course, is an issue but they may offer new directions for a student). Answers submitted can be rated according to usefulness by users.

Lastly, I discovered Yahoo! has a service they call ShortCuts (both Service Shortcuts and Open Shortcuts). If there is a relevant Service shortcut to your search, a small note will appear up at the top of your results page (eg. calculator, time zone, weather, etc). Open shortcuts will search favourite sites or start an Internet application. There are already many default shortcuts (eg. !movies, !mysp = myspace.com, !wiki = wikipedia) or you can create and set your own by following the instructions at the hyperlink involved.

I’m really glad I took the time to explore this search engine. I’m now going to include the Yahoo! directory search into my repertoire of assistance and onto the school’s Project Hotspots page.

I ran across this excellent UK-based site this morning in my ‘web wandering’ and thought I’d post it as others may also find it of use especially teachers working in the areas of debate and issues.

TrueTube

TrueTube explains itself as:

a free website which uses real-life stories and issues to encourage teenagers to explore and debate the world of morality, ethics, politics and religion. TrueTube brings to life the subjects at the heart of Secondary Education using short-form web-based video and multimedia technology. The site encourages teenagers to find their voice as they explore their own value systems and those of their peers around the corner and across the world.

I’ve had a little look around on the site and am very impressed. The contributions are monitored so the quality is good. Videos are down-loadable in case this site is blocked so teachers can still use them. There’s a tab at the top of the homepage on how to use the site – comments, videos can be uploaded as well as downloaded. The link below is to an article about the site.

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications-reports-articles/web-articles/Web-Article1205

One of the most important things I’ve learned facilitating the decision making working group is that there are a lot of tools out there to make the job easier. The reason decisions haven’t been made properly in the past has a lot to do with the casual approach taken to them. A typical pattern for making a decision has been something like this:

1. A problem is identified and brought up at a meeting.
2. Everyone tells their story about it or their take on it.
3. There is some discussion about the last time they dealt with it and what didn’t work
4. Some suggestions for what to do about it are offered and immediately criticised or dismissed
5. A suggestion is finally offered that hasn’t been tried or is the only/last one people can think of that sounds reasonable
6. A vote is taken – may or may not be unanimous
7. The decision is minuted
8. A person to do it may or may not be appointed
9. The committee moves on to the next item on the list

Several problems exist with this method but “The One About the Hammer” is the problem I want to examine in this blog entry. As Harvey, Bearley and Corkrum state:

Information tends to be wild and incomplete; individuals have widely different needs and demands; and each situation varies in its context and consequences. (2002, P. 51)

Structuring tools or devices are available to help focus, clarify and organise what we (or any group) are trying to accomplish. Being focussed, clear and organised is especially important  when situations are complex because the solutions will likely be complex too. Simple discussion will not sort out the complex issue, only waste time going in circles.

So far I have used two structuring tools outlined in The Practical Decision Maker: Snow Cards and the Discrepancy Analysis tool (Harvey, Bearley, & Corkrum, 2002, pp. 135-136, 220-222). Each of these tools has a very specific and separate function and it is important to use the right tool for the job.

Snow Cards assisted the working party to group the issues for clarification and focus the issues into a manageable number of categories. From it we were able to define our desired conditions quite clearly. The Discrepancy Analysis tool has given us a clearer picture of where exactly our shortfalls lie within the areas determined. I am now preparing to use the Cause/Effect Fishbone tool to assist the group to find the causes for the gaps in the conditions and hopefully find/ define a root problem to the situation.

I am finding a strength and integrity in the decision making process I’ve not encountered before from using these tools. But one member of the group has recently expressed annoyance (via email) with the structuring devises and the amount of time the process is taking. They are finding it ‘tedious’ and want to ‘get on with it’.

The authors do warn,

There are two classic errors that decision makers commit when working through the decision process. The first is to assume that decision making can be completed without the aid of structuring devices. The second is to use such devises too much or inappropriately (Harvey, Bearley and Corkrum, 2002, p.51)

They then discuss the use of tools such as brainstorming as a crutch when no one knows what else to do (When All Else Fails, Use a Hammer) and about using tools that don’t fit the job (Using a Sledgehammer to Put in a Finishing Nail) but they don’t define what they mean by ‘use too much’. Is using a structuring tool for each step too much? Going back to the analogy of The Hammer, am I using a set of hammers when I don’t need a hammer all the time? I don’t feel that that is so. I do feel that they tried to build ‘the thing’ without tools in the past, now it’s time to try the carpenter’s approach.

______________________

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=42166&

Harvey, T. R., Bearley, W. L., & Corkrum, S. M. (2002). The practical decision maker: A handbook for decision making and problem solving in organizations. Oxford: The Scarecrow Press. (Original work published 1997)

What is your opinion of Wikipedia? Should TLs encourage students to use it with care or should they advise students against using Wikipedia? What is your experience of using Wikipedia in terms of its realibility and accuracy?

Oh dear, here is where I have to confess that Wikipedia is one of my best friends. I have my trusty little laptop near the sofa and as we watch TV and wonder about things, we cruise Wikipedia for background information. It could be anything from Doctor Who directors to the name of the capital city of the Yukon territory.

Having said that, researching topics for academics is a different story. I still encourage students to use it (they will anyway so no point in trying to discourage it), it is an excellent starting place.

As a TL in a primary school, I find the information the 2/3/4 classes go to Wikipedia is general knowledge. Most of them will not end up using the information from Wiki at that age independently, the reading level is too high for them (eg. spiders). But from this age I let them try as the searching is good practice and I point out the hyperlinks at the bottom of the articles as possible places to search for more information. At this age books are still the best.

I read an article ’somewhere’ (lost in my saved bookmarks) about print encyclopedias and their role in teaching the organization of information (topics and subheadings etc) and that online resources full of hyperlinks in fact work against that organisational development. It made me look again at the presented projects and sure enough children who had relied exclusively on web sites seemed to have a lot less organization to their finished products (anecdotal evidence only, maybe no correlation at all, but I always take note now). But I stray (like a hyperlink )

With the grade 5/6 students I encourage them to look at the fascinating stuff going on on the discussion page of whatever the topic is that they are researching. It’s a whole other world ‘backstage’ with raging debates, nitpicking and colossal feats of collaboration. Information comes alive then. They see that learning is not some cut and paste activity, the answers they were looking for are not black and white. Many of our best discussions about the reliability of information have come from those pages. Take a peek! Here’s a link to the discussion page of stort story “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges which I think was mentioned in our study guide – clickhere

Photo from:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/190041904_7ef208610f.jpg?v=0

Chapter Three of Barell’s book, asks the reader to pause and ponder –

My responses are below but I’d love to hear others thoughts and suggestions.

How do you go about creating a culture within a classroom, and within a school, that fosters inquiry?

• listen to questions – use active listening techniques
• encourage students to listen to each other’s questions and responses and to ask each other questions before they ask the teacher. I want them to view each other as possible human resources not just adults.
• set expectations that no questions are to be rubbished as ‘dumb questions’.
• invite thoughtfulness – stop and think or write/think, envision

What have you done to enable students to feel comfortable posing questions?

I’m not in a classroom, I’m in the library and I feel that libraries are the ultimate classroom of inquiry So I :

• try to be to be curious myself. If a child talks to me about a topic (eg. sharks lose 200 teeth each year) I like to say “I wonder why that is? I wonder how …. I guess I wonder out loud a lot
• admit I don’t know things and then wonder out loud where the best place might be to look (in fact I often ‘don’t know’ even when I do know). I want to encourage them to think about the resources and which might be most useful for the question at hand.
• encourage them to report back and fill me in on anything I don’t know about that they find the answer to — then I can give them some positive feedback about their search efforts.
• began to place non-fiction books in the picture book display racks. Little kids can get a lot out of the pictures even if they can’t read the words and these are popular item for prep boys to take out. They would never go looking on the stacks for them at first. Now they will come in and ask if we have more on trucks, motorbikes, dinosaurs, volcanoes, tornadoes …. they venture into the non-fiction a lot more now.
• purchase and leave out odd facts books like Guiness World Book of Records, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Wacky but True magazines etc.
• teach them how to use the catalogue to search for resources as young as possible.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterarts/2549184786/