Following a Tweet link -- Custom Search Engines and Clipnotes

I followed one of Dennis' Tweets to this link:
http://mrgsclassroomreflections.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/trying-to-reinvent-the-wheel/

It's a blog post by a teacher of students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disabilities, who has experimented with creating a custom search engine, and using some tools that allow you to clip and present short bits of text, for his students because their own "filters" aren't that good due to their disabilities. I wonder whether these tools would also be good for elementary aged students, since their judgement also isn't always that good (due simply to their ages).

Example projects I like (briefer)

I was in the middle of writing this post, and I had saved periodically, but somehow I closed that window without saying "Publish", and now I can't find my saved stuff! Very disappointing! My original post had all sorts of annotations, but now I'm just going to try to paste in a couple of the links if I remember which ones they were:

http://mrkelln.wordpress.com/
I really like the informal tone ("you guys") of this blog, where a middle school teacher writes to his students about projects they are doing that integrate curriculum with having students use lots of cool digital creativity tools.


http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321
Cool PictureTrail stuff documenting classroom activities

http://rrfournier.wikispaces.com/
Useful information that staff need at certain times every year.

(Hey, the earlier draft just came up, and I posted it. Very strange.)

Example projects that I like

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321
Third-grade teacher's class blog, with PictureTrail stuff.

http://mrkelln.wordpress.com/
A middle school teacher writes TO and about his classes. He's experimenting with incorporating lots of new technology (Moodle for science lessons, Voicethread, etc.) in ways that the students learn the technology and use it themselves for projects. I like the informal tone of his posts to his students -- "you guys", etc. Interesting and kind of inspiring site.

http://msgee.edublogs.org/
An interesting example of using a class blog to motivate students. The teacher posted about reading strategies she was teaching, and her third-graders posted about their implementation of those strategies.

http://math8geometry.wikispaces.com/
Eighth-graders each made one page of a geometry wiki. Each page teaches one concept well. Interesting, and I bet the kids enjoyed doing it, but I bet they learned more about making a wiki page than about geometry overall from this project. Fun and a good way to learn technology, but not necessarily an efficient way to learn the geometry itself.

PictureTrail

The graphic (picture cube thing) that I just mentioned is apparently called PictureTrail. It takes lots of forms, not just a cube.

Cool picture cube graphic

Often I find the idea of including graphics more overwhelming than enticing, but this blog

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=162321

(which was one of the example projects that Dennis gave us links to) has one that even I really like -- a rotating picture cube thing. Cool!

Why I take notes on some of the articles here

I really like reading articles this way: I have the article open in one window on one side of my screen, and my blog open in another window on the other side. I read a little bit, then take notes and / or comment, then read some more, etc. -- Just like teaching "active reading" strategies to students, I feel like I get a lot more out of the articles, this way.

I certainly don't do this for every article -- that would take forever. And, right at the moment my wrists, shoulders, and fingers are starting to hurt -- NOT GOOD! So, it's just about time to stop taking notes, for tonight, even if I keep on reading. I really do like reading online this way, though.

Why creativity and information literacy together?

Why was Session 4 on both Creativity AND Information Literacy? These seem like very different topics. Right now it is the information literacy stuff that interests me the most. So much of web 2.0 "creativitiy" seems to involve pictures, movies, or sound -- I am more interested in text.

Social network for teachers using web 2.0 resources

This site

http://www.classroom20.com/

is a social network for those interested in using web 2.0 resources in schools. I don't currently feel like I have time for an online social network. I doubt that this is the most efficient way to learn, even though it says it strives to be beginner-friendly. It might be good for being inspired -- maybe I'll join it later if I do my creative sharing project on project-based learning. (Or, maybe not.)

Classroom 2.0 site for live shows to learn about web 2.0

This site

http://live.classroom20.com/

has hour-long live web learning shows about topics involving using web 2.0 resources. I'm not sure I'm ready to devote an hour at a time at home in such a structured way, yet -- that is, I often spend many hours at a time at home on this course, but I kind of like being free to jump from one thing to another at my own pace.

Maybe I'll try it out in the summer.

Blog on helping elementary students develop their search skills

I followed a link from

http://21cif.com/

to a blog post about ways to provide elementary students with search experiences that are well suited to helping them develop their skills. It's at
http://internetsearchchallenge.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-elementary-students-challenge-is.html

One big challenge for younger students is vocabulary. On average there are 5 words to describe an object or action, so it's common not to initially think of the same one that the author used. Younger students may have trouble thinking of lots of synonyms. Also, 2-word searches are much more effective than one-word searches, but can also lead you astray faster if you don't pick the "right" two words.

Older students often don't try looking for different keywords either, though.

You can create a "stocked pond" for kids to practice in using Nettrekker.com or creating a custom search engine. They will have an "authentic" search experience with a high likelihood of success.

Comments on 21rst Century Info. Fluency Home Page

I'm reading the article from Session 4 entitled "21rst Century Information Fluency". It' s partly an advertisement for a self-paced online course on finding online information. It only costs $29 and sounds really good! I might try it at some point. (Is this the same as the "Investigative Searching 20/10" course that the article mentions? It cites statistics that in just 8 hours or so, participants noticeably improved (statistically significant changes) their ability to locate information online. Cool!

http://21cif.com/

You can preview the course by logging in as "guest". I'll do that when I'm not so tired.

I followed a link to a blog post about ways to provide elementary students with search experiences that are well suited to helping them develop their skills. I think I'll put this in a new blog entry, though.

Comments on 21rst Century Info. Fluency / Illinois Math and Science Academy

This is a link to a very highly reviewed site full of resources to help students and teachers get better at online research. [Added later: OK, I've read some of the articles, now. This is a GREAT site for personal and teacher background information about information literacy on the internet, starting with pretty basic stuff! There are probably also useful student things, here, but so far I LOVE the teacher information! It's so clear, readable, and well-organized! And, hallelulah, the part that I started reading is a really good match to what I currently know and want to learn. Yay!!] Here's the link:

http://www.21cif.imsa.edu/rkit/newRkit/gettingstarted.html

It has a new address, 21cif.imsa.edu = 21cif.com, because it's become a private project.

There are some free "kits". (The kits seem to be fully available online, and consist of related sets of teacher articles, student activities, etc.) For example, I looked at the first one, "Getting Started". It looks at how to avoid getting out-of-date information (I think), searching vs. browsing, etc. It includes six model lessons (grades 3-12) that have been transformed ("easily", they say -- But I'm not clear on why we should assume that digital is better) into digital lessons. There are some challenges that I think are meant to be fun ways that students or teachers can test their developing search skills.

OK, these topics look WAY COOL! I wonder if I can delve more deeply into these and then use them in one of my final projects. (Right now I'm at least as interested in developing my OWN teaching skills as my students'!)

I read the linked article on browsing a live page vs. searching a cache. I'm tired and not catching everything right now. One thing I understood was that each search engine's crawler visits pages on a different schedule. The blurb about the page refers to the cache, but the title link at the top is to the live site. The live site might no longer be presenting the information in the blurb -- you might have to browse around the site to find it. Sometimes if a web address changes, the major search engines can lose their links to their archived copies. Sometimes a broader database such as archive.org, or a more specific one such as mathforum.org, can maintain those cached pages for much longer.

I read the linked article on browsing vs. searching. Browsing means clicking links from page to page. It's slow, "primitive', and speculative. Both skill (scanning and choosing keywords) and luck are involved. (This makes me feel better. I occasionally enjoy browsing -- when I'm not looking for particular information but rather just pursuing interesting threads for the fun of it. What helps is rich content in an area I'm interested in, links that aren't broken, and no particular time pressure or need for an actual product or specific answer. Examples include the Holocaust course that I took from Facing History and Ourselves a couple of years ago {"Enjoy" doesn't fit the type of content in this case, but I did find it deeply involving and never begrudged the hours and hours that I spent following links and reading well beyond the course requirements}, and also the evening that I spent following links about project-based learning earlier in this current course. . . . On the other hand, when I am trying to find particular information, especially if there's any time pressure, browsing feels very slow and time-consuming -- like I'm being sucked into a great big black hole without really understanding how. This article helps to make that feeling make sense.)

Oh, I think I understand: When you do a search in a search engine, the search engine is ALWAYS relying upon its archived pages for what results to return to you. For breaking news, it will take a while for the archiving crawlers to come across the relevant articles.

Google is a database. (You know, I never thought of it that way. I just thought of it as a search engine. It's a database; that's why you can use the Google search box to locate specific live pages.)

There's a reference to a Deep Web search. I think that means that you try to dive deep, not wide, by typing in a fairly simple search term and then continuing your search using one of the sites that comes up as your new "base". . . . Later, one of these articles says that Deep Web searching means looking for information that will be in a different database than the one you start out in.

Having a good vocabulary is useful for browsing because the author's words may often be different or more general than the keyword that you first think of.

The article says that browsing may require a lot of backing out of deadends, which "requires patience, persistence, and time." This is part of what frustrates me when i'm actually looking for the answer to a specific question or for specific kinds of information.

The article describes the "typical search experience" as querying a search engine, then choosing among the results and clicking the title links to go to the live pages. That's what I've almost always done. However, the linked article "Cache Advantage" lists some really intriguing advantages to clicking on the link to the CACHED (archived) page, instead: the link will never be broken (Yay!!), the page retrieved will definitely match the snippet description, and the keywords that match the query will be highlighted (which can be helpful for younger students who aren't very good at scanning large blocks of text, yet). . . . Cool; I never thought of these advantages! And, earlier it implied that many sites are crawled quite frequently, so I don't think the information would be very out-of-date.

Some search engines: Google, Yahoo, Ask, JSTOR and the WayBackMachine.

This article http://www.21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/newRkit/databases/search_archive.html also contains some basic practice activities for students about searching caches.

The query site:animal.discovery.com meerkat "uses a special operator to search only animal.discovery.com for occurrences of meerkat".

OK, next I want to read one of their articles on queries. It will have to wait, though, because I need to "pull back a couple of levels" and check out some other areas from last session's readings. I have enjoyed this browsing so far tonight, though. I LOVE this site, and can't wait to learn more from it!!

Notes and comments on Seymour Papert's article on educational games

This is from a link from Cluster 4-1 of Session 4.

One thing I wonder as I'm starting to read -- It's a 1998 article -- Haven't "educational games" changed a lot since then? (I'll have to check out the related presentation for more up-to-date info.)

"Shavian reversals—offspring that keep the bad features of each parent and lose the good ones" -- The idea is that this is all too common: Educational games that have the WORST features of both schooling and video games, instead of the BEST features of both.

"The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make Math Easy." . . . What is best about the best games is that they draw kids into some very hard learning. Did you ever hear a game advertised as being easy? What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring." --> Summary: Kids like games that are challenging, not games that are easy. Kids dislike school not because it's easy, but because the fragmentation of learning into little tiny pieces makes it seem irrelevant and therefore boring. Too many "educational" games make learning fragmented and easy instead of cohesive and challenging!

In contrast, game designers' "livelihoods depend on millions of people being prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex game. " He says that kids like learning that's challenging, as long as it's also highly engaging and the challenge has to do with solving a bigger problem that's interesting to them. [I get an image of those Dungeons and Dragons -style games where players are trying to find tools and clues to figure out how to get to the next level of the dungeon. Personally, though, I don't like games like this. . .]

[As I write this, Dennis is talking about Second Life being used to treat PTSD in returning veterans. That's really cool!]

www.papert.org/article... [Unfortunately the whole link isn't coming through.]

More, later.