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Google Instant Search - Impact on student research?

Last week Google released a new way of searching when you are on their home page called instant search.  What instant search does is provides a list of website results instantly as you type each letter.  Now if you are logged into your google account the results are both personalized (based upon your web history) and localized.

While it is good practice to employ several search strategies and to use different search engines, data suggests that most students will only use Google.  Now with Google instant the displayed results of your search are different based upon where you are and who you are.  While this might be a good thing if you are searching for pizza, what if you are comparing the policies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  As you type W...A...S...H...I...N...G and so on the results you get will change instantly based upon where you are at and your past history as you type each letter.  Will this be a distraction to students as they search?  Student habits rarely took students past the first page of results and some would suggest that this new method of displaying results will not take students past the first three hits for the first few letters of a word that they type.

Here I typed an L into the search box while logged into my google account.  The top hit is Las Vegas Review Journal.  However, I bet that is not the case for my father who lives in Northern Wisconsin.

So my question is again... what implications do you think this will have on student research?  Or am I over thinking the implications?

Webquests vs Websheets

Webquests seem to be a popular activity for teachers to use in their classrooms.  I have no problem with webquests when used and created as they were originally intended.  However the traditional webquest has been skewed into something that it shouldn't be, a websheet.

A webquest, in it's intended sense, is to divided into several parts.  First the student should be presented with some sort of real world scenario/problem.  The student(s) is then given some sort of role in which they need to solve that problem.  The webquest (especially for students first learning how to navigate the web) then will then provide a listing of resources for students to look at to gain background, current research, and general information about the task at hand.  This can help model for the student what quality web sources look like.  After the student wonders through the information the students then tackle the given task, and CREATE something.  They need to use upper levels of their brain and synthesize and evaluate the information.   They need to come up with a solution to the problem by creating the actual product.

I have been disappointed with the number of webquests that I have found/seen/heard about that are turned into glorified worksheets, or as I call them "websheets" (not to be confused with Oricle Databases websheets).  It is absurd that we continue to have students lookup, record, lookup, record, lookup, record.... and depend on Bloom's lowest level of taxonomy.  Having a student look up information on a website and transfer information to a piece of paper is NOT a webquest, and does not deserve to be called that.  Call it what it is a boring worksheet, that uses the internet as the source of information instead of a textbook.

Check out the webquest created by Duncan Morrissey Lisa Tattoli at SDSU called Modern Museum of Romanticism.  It challenges students to look at Romantic Art and then create a museum exhibit.

Teachers, please be careful when browsing through webquests.  Make sure that the webquest is of quality design and not just a last ditch effort at lesson planning.  Webquest authors, please continue to create quality webquests that are fun, exciting, and challenge students to think.