Wednesday, February 09, 2011

More Perspective

by Shelly Blake-Plock

Today at beginning of class...

Student 1: "Where can I find a picture of the baseball field?"
Student 2: "Google."
Student 3: "Look: here it is on a Google Map."
Student 2: "What did people do before Google?"
Student 3: "Yahoo."
Student 4 (completely with not a trace of irony or sarcasm): "What's Yahoo?"

5 comments:

  1. At first glance this is so funny, I find myself asking the same question often, but on thinking about it further, I don't know how funny it is.. but it is true. What if the time comes when students no longer have the ability to go out and actively search for something based on prior knowledge and rely solely on some computer to sort through all the information for them?
    I'm all for using online databases and search engines but the more and more research I find myself doing online- the more distanced I feel from what I'm actually looking for. I more than recognize google and others as useful tools, but is there fear of students becoming too dependent on search engines and loosing the ability to actively engage with and manipulate the information they seek (whether it be online of off)?

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  2. @ Wesly: Your point is well taken. I agree students do need to be able to manipulate information on their own. I'd argue that the challenge for students will be learning about all of the online tools available to them and which one to use when...when to use Google, when to use Twitter, when to engage in the blogosphere, etc. Learners will need to be sophisticated manipulators of the various tech tools and the information itself.

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  3. I have found that Research skills are increasingly important as more things are coming online. Search used to be simplistic and intuitive. Search for a car, get that car in the search results. Now you need to analyze the results more than just look and click -- something I learned during my M.Ed...

    ~~ Jelkimantis ~~

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  4. Being in a low-income school, I find the opposite to be true. Not entirely sure why, but they all know yahoo and yahoo mail. But they have very little exposure to Google.

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