Tech Tip: Google Makes Searching for Creative Commons Images Easier

Google recently changed their image search to allow people to search images by usage rights easier. In the past you would have to go to Advanced Search to filter image results.  They have now added this to the "Search Tools" menu in Image search.

This will hopefully make it easer for teachers and students to search and use images appropriately.

How long will written text be important?

Kelly Gallagher the author of Reversing Redicide (2010) said "Educators know the commonly cited culprits behind the decline of reading: poverty, lack of parent education, print-poor environments at home, second-language issues, the over scheduling of children, and competition from electronic media."

 I want to reflect upon my own household.  We are very fortunate to not be impacted by the first four culprits listed above;  however, we are severely impacted by the last two.  I have 3 children, all three have a passion to reading (I thank their mother for this).  I would like to study the habits of my oldest who is 9. He is currently reading at the 9th grade reading level in both fluency and comprehension.  The kid is scary smart.  Without sounding egotistical he got my natural gift as an auditory learner and his mother's passion for reading.   This passion for reading still takes a back seat to electronic media.  You give him a choice between the iPad or a book and it iPad 100% of the time.  What has been fostered in him though is that when the iPad is in "time out" the first thing he reaches for is a book.  The thing we struggle with at home is, how to teach him how to "self police" that.

Books are continually taking a back door to electronic media, even if the student has a love for reading. The big question I have is, "Is there a link between reading fluency and comprehension and audio visual fluency and comprehension?"  In other words can a poor reader still critically analyze film for example?  Also if you look at story telling over the course of history the medium has changed, from pictographs on caves, to oral tradition, to written.  These changes occurred over thousands of years.  It is hard to imagine, but are we in a transitional time from written form to a more audio visual form?

Technology has fostered each of those changes, and is it possible that technology is changing the medium again?  As digital media continues to become easier to create we are leveling the playing field for both authors and consumers of that type of content.  Will reading and writing ever become a "niche" art form and everything else is communicated audio visually, much like painting, and oral storytelling has become today? These are big questions that we have to answer, and are not going to be answered anytime soon, but in my mind these are huge questions that we need to answer.

Gallagher, K. (2010). Reversing readicide. Reading to Learn, 67(6), 36-41.

Instagram also on its way out? What we should be teaching students.

This has been my observation over the past year, what do you think?

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/12/report-teens-are-like-totally-bailing-on-facebook/ 

I will go on record and say that Instagram is also on its way out.  For those of you that don't know Instagram is now owned by Facebook and we will see it rolled deeper and deeper into their product until the Instagram name is no more.  In fact, the article says Instagram has seen no growth in teenage demographic over the past year.  Twitter has been a hot spot this year.  What I find funny is I first started talking to students about twitter when I joined 6 years ago.  They all mocked me and said twitter was dumb.  Well I guess I was correct.

Here is where this conversation is going.  How do these companies make money?  From the data they collect on you.  You are not the consumer, but the product.   They are selling your data to advertising companies.  This is why the adds  you see in these services are so relevant.  Now, most people don't think about that or don't care, but my second prediction is that eventually people will and we will see a backlash agains companies like google, facebook, and twitter.  The question is will it get to the point where people want a service like twitter and facebook, but privacy from advertisers.  That is where app.net comes in.  This is my prediction.  We will get to the point where people want a social network that they have control of and be willing to pay "real money" in stead of their data. I bring this up for a few reasons.  It is really important that students wrestle with these topics and understand that someone is making money whatever the business model.  Servers don't run themselves for free.  

How far are we willing to go in terms of our privacy?  Are we willing to give up information about ourselves for a better experience?  Some would argue yes.  Look at the benefit we get from google.  In the "olden days" we would have to search for restaurant Summerlin or restaurant Las Vegas.  Now Google already knows you are in Las Vegas and will give you results for that.  However, it is really obnoxious when we are planning a trip and searching for restaurants in Boston then we need to specify to google that we want restaurants in Boston. This also affects how students do research.  A student that searches for American Revolution in Las Vegas will get different results from American Revolution search done by kids in Concord, MA or London.  Are we teaching these skills to students?  How do we get out of our private search bubbles that have been tailored to us? 

 If you are interested in these topics of privacy, research and filters please check out the following: I had the opportunity to see Eli Pariser keynote a conference last summer on Search Bubbles and Online Filters.  You can see his TED talk here:  http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html 



 You can also find a somewhat counter point of view in Jeff Jarvis's book Public Parts:How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. 

 These are important things that we need to think about ourselves and with our students.

New Reddit Series

There are many, many, many sites out there where users generate, share and vote on content.  One of the more popular ones in the past year has been reddit.com.  Like any other site like this there is a wealth of inappropriate and downright nasty content that is found and aggregated.  The content is not created by reddit.com, but submitted to Reddit and voted on by its users.  There are also several reputable companies that use reddit.com to get their content to viewers.

Wikipedia can explain better than I can,

"Reddit, is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text ("self") post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page." Users can then comment on t/,[stylized as reddit, is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text ("self") post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down", which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page."

 Users can then comment on those links.

Anyway, a section of the website that you should know about is the "Explain Like I'm Five" series.  It started, I believe, by users that are posting difficult questions and then asking that the answers are explained to them like they are five.  My guess would be mostly high school and college students.  You can view the series here http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/ . Then users would attempt to answer their questions as if the asker was "like they are five."  Some are actually really good and some are absolute garbage.  Some questions are not meant to be explained to a five year old, but the community known as the internet is trying.

As teachers we need to be aware of sites like this for a few reasons:

1. Students and Learners in general are really cleaver in how they use online resources to get information that they need.  I think that this is really cool.
2. We need to be aware about sites like this when designing assessments.  Asking yourself is that "googleable" not enough anymore.
3. Sites like turnitin.com simply can't keep up with the content being generated at sites like this.
4. If a student uses information from here how do we teach them to take it further and check the resources?
5. How can we harness (not necessarily reddit.com) this style of learning in our classrooms?  Students today want to and do learn by being social.  It is actually their preferred method of learning.  I am not discounting the appropriateness of individual deep types of thinking, in fact that is also extremely important, but how are we meeting the needs of our diverse set of learners.

Finally,  reddit.com has turned some of the "Explain Like I'm Five" series into youtube videos.  You should be aware of these also.  The series is, like the written questions, taking extremely complex topics and boiling them down.  Whenever that happens people tend to "miss the mark."  These videos will become viral and might create simplistic misconceptions in your content area.  On the other hand they could be springboards into discussion.  I have not watched them all nor evaluated their appropriateness for all audiences, but I wanted to make you aware of them and their potential impact.The video series can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/reddit/videos?view=0
An example:

LEC Photostream

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

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.