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Cathy Oxley

Free Technology for Teachers: Beyond Google - Improve Your Search Results - 20 views

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    " Beyond Google - AddThis Posted by Mr. Byrne at 2:12 PM Labels: Google, Internet search, teaching technology, Teaching With Technology, Technology Integration, web search, web search strategies 5 comments: SIS Media Specialist said... Geesh Richard, another great resource; like your posts are not enough. Many, many thanks. I have followed your blog for about a year and have learned SO MUCH. I understand you are from CT. Any chance we can get you to the joint annual CASL/CECA (Connecticut Association of School Librarians and Connecticut Educators Computer Association) conference next year? October 24, 2009 10:35 PM Mr. Byrne said... Yes, I am originally from Connecticut. In fact, I went to CCSU for freshman year. I'd like to come to CASL/CECA. Can you send me an email? richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers Thanks. October 25, 2009 6:47 AM Linux and Friends said... Thanks for the amazing document. I am aware of a few of the resources listed in the document. However, many of the others are new to me. I will definitely check them out. November 2, 2009 9:45 PM dunnes said... I visited and bookmarked four sites from this post! Thank you for the great resource. Students want to use Google rather than stick to the school library catalog, but they need more instruction on how to do this. I have seen too many children search with ineffective terms, and then waste time clicking on their random results. November 8, 2009 12:38 PM Lois said... Beyond Google is a great resource. I wish I had your skills for taking what you learn and putting it together as you do. I love reading your daily blog. November 15, 2009 10:04 AM Post a Comment Links to this post Beyond Google: Improve Your Search Results http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/10/beyond-google-improve-your-search.html While working with some of my colleagues in a workshop earlier this week, I was reminded that a lot of people aren't familiar with tools
Dennis OConnor

Five Forms of Filtering « Innovation Leadership Network - 12 views

  • We create economic value out of information when we figure out an effective strategy that includes aggregating, filtering and connecting.
  • So, the real question is, how do we design filters that let us find our way through this particular abundance of information? And, you know, my answer to that question has been: the only group that can catalog everything is everybody. One of the reasons you see this enormous move towards social filters, as with Digg, as with del.icio.us, as with Google Reader, in a way, is simply that the scale of the problem has exceeded what professional catalogers can do. But, you know, you never hear twenty-year-olds talking about information overload because they understand the filters they’re given. You only hear, you know, forty- and fifty-year-olds taking about it, sixty-year-olds talking about because we grew up in the world of card catalogs and TV Guide. And now, all the filters we’re used to are broken and we’d like to blame it on the environment instead of admitting that we’re just, you know, we just don’t understand what’s going on.
  • Judgement-based filtering is what people do.
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  • The five forms of filtering break into two categories: judgement-based, or mechanical.
  • However, even experts can’t deal with all of the information available on the subjects that interest them – that’s why they end up specialising.
  • As we gain skills and knowledge, the amount of information we can process increases. If we invest enough time in learning something, we can reach filter like an expert.
  • There can also be expert networks – in some sense that is what the original search engines were, and what mahalo.com is trying now. The problem that the original search engines encountered is that the amount of information available on the web expanded so quickly that it outstripped the ability of the network to keep up with it. This led to the development of google’s search algorithm – an example of one of the versions of mechanical filtering: algorithmic.
  • heingold also provides a pretty good description of the other form of mechanical filtering, heuristic, in his piece on crap detection. Heuristic filtering is based on a set of rules or routines that people can follow to help them sort through the information available to them.
  • Filtering by itself is important, but it only creates value when you combine it with aggregating and connecting. As Rheingold puts it:
  • The important part, as I stressed at the beginning, is in your head. It really doesn’t do any good to multiply the amount of information flowing in, and even filtering that information so that only the best gets to you, if you don’t have a mental cognitive and social strategy for how you’re going to deploy your attention. (emphasis added)
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    I've been seeking a way to explain why I introduce Diigo along with Information fluency skills in the E-Learning for Educators Course. This article quickly draws the big picture.  Folks seeking to become online teachers are pursuing a specialized teaching skill that requires an information filtering strategy as well as what Rheingold calls "a mental cognitive and social strategy for how you're going to deploy your attention."
Robin Cicchetti

Information Literacy for the 21st Century « Libraries and Transliteracy - 21 views

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    7 points of information literacy: * IL as context specific and context sensitive; * IL demanding a variety of behaviours: not just searching, but also encountering, browsing, monitoring, managing and creating; * People moving along complex paths to meet their information needs: moving between the virtual and physical worlds, and using different sources and spaces; * IL in digital environments; * IL with people sources; * People being information literate individually and collaboratively * People being aware they are information literate: you cannot be an information literate 21st Century citizen without being conscious of the need to develop these IL skills and attitudes, and continue to update your IL through your life! Excellent article.
Anthony Beal

SearchReSearch - 23 views

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    A blog about search, search skills, teaching search, learning how to search, learning how to use Google effectively, learning how to do research. It also covers a good deal of sensemaking and information foraging.
beth gourley

The Library in the New Age - The New York Review of Books - 0 views

  • four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
  • around 4000 BC, humans learned to write.
  • the invention of writing was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity
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  • second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era. By the third century AD, the codex—that is, books with pages that you turn as opposed to scrolls that you roll
  • eventually included differentiated words (that is, words separated by spaces
  • other reader's aids
  • codex, in turn, was transformed by the invention of printing with movable type in the 1450s.
  • technology of printing did not change for nearly four centuries, but the reading public grew larger and larger, thanks to improvements in literacy, education, and access to the printed word.
  • fourth great change, electronic communication
  • movable type to the Internet, 524 years;
  • writing to the codex, 4,300 years;
  • codex to movable type, 1,150 years;
  • would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself.
  • Internet to search engines, nineteen years
  • search engines to Google's algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years;
  • continued at such a rate as to seem both unstoppable and incomprehensible.
  • continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
  • every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable.
    • beth gourley
       
      premise
  • pace of change seems breathtaking:
  • news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.
  • News is not what happened but a story about what happened.
  • aving learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary sources for knowing what really happened
  • newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events
  • We live in a time of unprecedented accessibility to information that is increasingly unreliable. Or do we?
  • as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission
  • Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
  • Unbelievers used to dismiss Henry Clay Folger's determination to accumulate copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare as the mania of a crank.
  • When Folger's collection grew beyond three dozen copies, his friends scoffed at him as Forty Folio Folger.
  • eighteen of the thirty-six plays in the First Folio had never before been printed
  • only two were reprinted without change from earlier quarto editions
  • extual stability never existed in the pre-Internet eras.
  • Piracy was so pervasive in early modern Europe that best-sellers could not be blockbusters as they are today
  • They abridged, expanded, and reworked texts as they pleased, without worrying about the authors' intentions.
  • question in perspective by discussing two views of the library, which I would describe as grand illusions—grand and partly true.
  • o put it positively, there is something to be said for both visions, the library as a citadel and the Internet as open space.
  • We have come to the problems posed by Google Book Search.
  • Google proposal seemed to offer a way to make all book learning available to all people, or at least those privileged enough to have access to the World Wide Web
  • will open up possibilities for research involving vast quantities of data, which could never be mastered without digitization
  • Electronic Enlightenment, a project sponsored by the Voltaire Foundation of Oxford
  • scholars will be able to trace references to individuals, books, and ideas throughout the entire network of correspondence that undergirded the Enlightenment
  • notably American Memory sponsored by the Library of Congress[1] and the Valley of the Shadow created at the University of Virginia[2] —have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of databases on this scale
  • will make research libraries obsolete
  • 2. Although Google pursued an intelligent strategy by signing up five great libraries, their combined holdings will not come close to exhausting the stock of books in the United States.
  • 1. According to the most utopian claim of the Googlers, Google can put virtually all printed books on-line.
  • If Google missed this book, and other books like it, the researcher who relied on Google would never be able to locate certain works of great importance.
  • On the contrary, Google will make them more important than ever. To support this view, I would like to organize my argument around eight points.
  • For books under copyright, however, Google will probably display only a few lines at a time, which it claims is legal under fair use.
  • 3. Although it is to be hoped that the publishers, authors, and Google will settle their dispute, it is difficult to see how copyright will cease to pose a problem.
  • But nothing suggests that it will take account of the standards prescribed by bibliographers, such as the first edition to appear in print or the edition that corresponds most closely to the expressed intention of the author.
  • Google defines its mission as the communication of information—right now, today; it does not commit itself to conserving texts indefinitely.
  • it has not yet ventured into special collections, where the rarest works are to be found. And of course the totality of world literature—all the books in all the languages of the world—lies far beyond Google's capacity to digitize
  • Electronic enterprises come and go. Research libraries last for centuries. Better to fortify them than to declare them obsolete
  • 5. Google will make mistakes.
  • Once we believed that microfilm would solve the problem of preserving texts. Now we know better.
  • 6. As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that Google's copies will last.
  • all texts "born digital" belong to an endangered species
  • 7. Google plans to digitize many versions of each book, taking whatever it gets as the copies appear, assembly-line fashion, from the shelves; but will it make all of them available?
  • 4. Companies decline rapidly in the fast-changing environment of electronic technology.
  • No single copy of an eighteenth-century best-seller will do justice to the endless variety of editions. Serious scholars will have to study and compare many editions, in the original versions, not in the digitized reproductions that Google will sort out according to criteria that probably will have nothing to do with bibliographical scholarship.
  • 8. Even if the digitized image on the computer screen is accurate, it will fail to capture crucial aspects of a book.
  • ts physical aspects provide clues about its existence as an element in a social and economic system; and if it contains margin notes, it can reveal a great deal about its place in the intellectual life of its readers.
  • Rare book rooms are a vital part of research libraries, the part that is most inaccessible to Google. But libraries also provide places for ordinary readers to immerse themselves in books,
  • Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library.
  • I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.
  • he research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
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    The library as citadel and as the open internet both play an important and distinguishable role.
beth gourley

Gutenberg 2.0 | Harvard Magazine May-Jun 2010 - 10 views

  • Her staff offers a complete suite of information services to students and faculty members, spread across four teams. One provides content or access to it in all its manifestations; another manages and curates information relevant to the school’s activities; the third creates Web products that support teaching, research, and publication; and the fourth group is dedicated to student and faculty research and course support. Kennedy sees libraries as belonging to a partnership of shared services that support professors and students. “Faculty don’t come just to libraries [for knowledge services],” she points out. “They consult with experts in academic computing, and they participate in teaching teams to improve pedagogy. We’re all part of the same partnership and we have to figure out how to work better together.”
  • It’s not that we don’t need libraries or librarians,” he continues, “it’s that what we need them for is slightly different. We need them to be guides in this increasingly complex world of information and we need them to convey skills that most kids actually aren’t getting at early ages in their education. I think librarians need to get in front of this mob and call it a parade, to actually help shape it.”
  • Her staff offers a complete suite of information services to students and faculty members, spread across four teams. One provides content or access to it in all its manifestations; another manages and curates information relevant to the school’s activities; the third creates Web products that support teaching, research, and publication; and the fourth group is dedicated to student and faculty research and course support. Kennedy sees libraries as belonging to a partnership of shared services that support professors and students. “Faculty don’t come just to libraries [for knowledge services],” she points out. “They consult with experts in academic computing, and they participate in teaching teams to improve pedagogy. We’re all part of the same partnership and we have to figure out how to work better together.”
    • beth gourley
       
      Good summary of differentiating library services and the need to accommodate staffing. Ultimatley makes for the teaching partnership.
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  • “The digital world of content is going to be overwhelming for librarians for a long time, just because there is so much,” she acknowledges. Therefore, librarians need to teach students not only how to search, but “how to think critically about what they have found…what they are missing… and how to judge their sources.” 
  • But making comparisons between digital and analog libraries on issues of cost or use or preservation is not straightforward. If students want to read a book cover to cover, the printed copy may be deemed superior with respect to “bed, bath and beach,” John Palfrey points out. If they just want to read a few pages for class, or mine the book for scattered references to a single subject, the digital version’s searchability could be more appealing; alternatively, students can request scans of the pages or chapter they want to read as part of a program called “scan and deliver” (in use at the HD and other Harvard libraries) and receive a link to images of the pages via e-mail within four days. 
  • (POD) would allow libraries to change their collection strategies: they could buy and print a physical copy of a book only if a user requested it. When the user was done with the book, it would be shelved. It’s a vision of “doing libraries ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case,’” says Palfrey. (At the Harvard Book Store on Massachusetts Avenue, a POD machine dubbed Paige M. Gutenborg is already in use. Find something you like in Google’s database of public-domain books—perhaps one provided by Harvard—and for $8 you can own a copy, printed and bound before your wondering eyes in minutes. Clear Plexiglas allows patrons to watch the process—hot glue, guillotine-like trimming blades, and all—until the book is ejected, like a gumball, from a chute at the bottom.)
  • We’re rethinking the physical spaces to accommodate more of the type of learning that is expected now, the types of assignments that faculty are making, that have two or three students huddled around a computer working together, talking.” 
  • Libraries are also being used as social spaces,
  • In terms of research, students are asking each other for information more now than in the past, when they might have asked a librarian.
  • On the contrary, the whole history of books and communication shows that one medium does not displace another.
  • it’s not just a service organization. I would even go so far as to call it the nervous system of our corporate body.”
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    "This defines a new role for librarians as database experts and teachers, while the library becomes a place for learning about sophisticated search for specialized information." "How do we make information as useful as possible to our community now and over a long period of time?"
Dennis OConnor

Information-Fluency-Newsletter - 13 views

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    The most recent issue of the 21cif Information Fluency newsletter. Feel free to join! Low volume news letter dedicated to searching, evaluating and ethical use of digital information. Includes an invitation for free access to our new 3 hour self paced training course and online assessment: Information Fluency Investigator 3.1.
Cathy Oxley

Free Search Better Tutorial at GCFLearnFree.org - 37 views

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    All about online search How to read a webpage Evaluate a webpage - practice Google search tips Judging online information
jenibo

Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need - 17 views

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    choose the best search for your information needs
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    Invaluable reference for students.
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    Awesome page for finding the correct search engine or directory for your need!
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    Match your search tool with your information need.
Antonietta Neighbour

oSkope visual search - A fun way to search - YouTube - 13 views

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    This is a visual search engine which searches Youtube, flickr, amazon, ebay and fotolia.  Register and you can store your results. 
Angie Spann

Lesson Plans - Search Education - Google - 57 views

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    With more and more of the world's content online, it is critical that students understand how to effectively use web search to find quality sources appropriate to their task. We've created a series of lessons to help you guide your students to use search meaningfully in their schoolwork and beyond. On this page, you'll find Search Literacy lessons and A Google A Day classroom challenges. Our search literacy lessons help you meet the new Common Core State Standards and are broken down based on level of expertise in search: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced.
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    I cannot wait to look through these in depth. I was just thinking my lessons needed a bit more umph! Thanks for sharing!
Kathy Lawrence

Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google - 13 views

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    "The feature that I've found most useful is the ability to order search results. If you are doing searches by date, as my students were, Blekko allows you to add the slashtag "/date" to the end of your query and retrieve information in a chronological fashion. "
Dave Crusoe

Search Engines, Boolean Logic and Education: What's important for educators to know? - 0 views

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    An essay to explore how shifts in search engine technologies may have an impact on instructional practice and content -- would love thoughts & feedback!
Yvonne Barrett

Overview - TechDeepWeb - 25 views

  • earch engines, index less than 1% of the Web
  • information in the deep Web is of higher quality, that is, less “noise” and more focused. If you are searching for information using only surface Web search engines, you are missing 99% of the content of the Web. Moreover, 95% of the deep Web is free publicly accessible information
  • The deep Web is not a substitute for surface search engines, but a complement to a complete search approach.
Caroline Roche

Incompetent Research Skills Curb Users' Problem Solving (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - 40 views

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    A good short piece about how users search, and the importance of teaching information literacy in schools
Martha Hickson

Search Challenges - 33 views

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    Individual and group challenges are a great way to teach and practice information fluency. All aspects of searching and evaluation are covered by these game-like challenges, from turning questions into effective queries, picking the right databases, homing in while browsing, evaluating authors and content, and more. Challenges are linked to Common Core State Standards and Information Fluency Competencies
Katy Vance

Teaher's Guide to Information Crap Detection ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning - 0 views

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    # 5 on this page is an excellent video by Howard Rheingold about the priorities for teaching information literacy in this world of the Internet, search engines, and social media.
Jennifer Dimmick

ArchivesInfo: What is Information? Teaching Information Skills to High School Students - 39 views

  • On a path to boost student research skills, I have been working with freshmen English teachers and administration to  evaluate the research skills of incoming freshmen. This past week, we had all freshmen classes take an assessment that is considered a standard in this area. (The test shall remain nameless.) Its focus is on particular research skills. It asks questions about things such as Boolean searching, MLA format, etc. etc. I immediately follow the test by teaching a class about information during the second half of the period.
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    Blog post on teaching information literacy to high school students
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