Unit 5 summary

1. Search

• Compare the search results offered by Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing & Instagrok.  Search topic: Ancient Olympics
• Rate the effectiveness of these search engines?

2. Evaluating resources

• Find and post a trusted web resource
• How do you know it’s reliable?
• What was your thought process – how did you go about evaluating this resource?

3. Tagging

How did you find the process of tagging your blog posts or Evernote records. Send us the link to your new blog post in Edmodo.

1. My search term for this assignment was “Ancient Olympics.”

Google, Google (intermediate reading level), and Bing all delivered very similar results with ‘olympic.org’, ‘perseus.tufts.edu’ and ‘en.wikipedia.org’ showing in the top four entries.  Duck Duck Go and Instagrok brought forth some different search results  in their top four  suggested sites, however they both suggested bbc.co.uk which was also common to Google.

The lay out of results in all the search engines was very similar with the exception of Instagrok; I found Instgrok far more appealing due to its more visual and interactive nature.  I think school students would engage well with Instagrok; the way the results are displayed not in a linear fashion but as mind maps, showing links to associated topics.  This mind map approach is similar to Google ‘knowledge graphs’ in the way they build webs of related knowledge.  I had not used Instagrok before but will certainly now suggest it to students at school; it will be interesting to see if “grokking becomes as popular as “googling”?!

Duck Duck Go would be a perfect search engine for primary school students. I think the younger age demographic would definitely find it cute and appealing.  For the younger age group I also really like the reading level option within Google; this search option would also be very useful with integration and ESL stdents.

Research skills are such important life skills to teach to our students and one of the most important skills is being able to evaluate search results.  Getting students to check facts with at least three different sources would be an excellent start for most students.  Teenage high school students would also love the idea of “crap detection tools”!  CARS and 5Ws have very clear, attractive layouts whilst ERGO is by far the most comprehensive site with many interesting and useful pages. However, I think the CRAP tool will appeal to younger teenage students due to its easily remembered acronym.  The Evaluation Wizard in the 21^st Century Information Fluency site would be great for senior students entering into VCE.  I also really liked the Scope and Sequence Chart in commonsensemedia.org.  This whole site was very attractive with its colour coded content; it reminded me ofcreativecommons.org.au.  Are these two sites linked in some way, I wonder?  Both sites are very appealing and the content is clear and easy to understand; Creativecommons.org.au helps students to share, remix and reuse others’ material legally whilst commonsensemedia.org reviews websites, games, books, music and movies, giving age appropriate recommendations and learning ratings.  Using a combination of these two websites could help students to evaluate web content and then to use the content appropriately and legally.

1.  Hoax / Bogus websites.

Checking out hoax/bogus websites would be a really fun activity to do with school students; an activity that would draw their attention to the fickle and unreliable aspects of the web.  Some websites seem so obviously hoax and tongue in cheek to us e.g. Aluminum foil deflector Beanie and Computer Tan but to younger students or ESL students the bogus nature of these sites may not be so obvious.  With some websites however it is not so easy to determine whether they are bogus or genuine.  I decided to check out fabflour.co.uk for validity as it was listed in both the goodwebguide.co.uk as a good site but in the Oklahoma University site as a hoax site!

How do I know – good or bogus?  My instinct tells me good but I need to check further …..

FAB stands for the Flour Advisory Bureau and the ‘fabflour’ website claims to provide facts about bread in the UK.  The site gives links to other seemingly credible sites such as grainchain.com and through that gives links to active Twitter and Facebook accounts and a YouTube channel.  I examined some of the content… The Wheat and Intolerance Report, for example appeared to be a very comprehensive 15 page report with seemingly impressive references; I checked the first three references which were all legitimate.  I found fabflour.co.uk an interesting and informative site as were all the linked sites.  The site is full of excellent free information and teaching resources on topics such as healthy eating, nutrition, baking, farming and sustainability.  The Flour Advisory Bureau (FAB) was founded in 1956 to provide information on all matters relating to flour and bread in the UK; their website is modern, colourful and interesting and despite being listed as bogus by Oaklahoma University, I agree with goodguide.co.uk and find it an informative and genuine site.

3. Tagging

Link to blog post 4…. edited with tags:

Tagging my previous post and also my Unit 5 post seemed to be a straightforward process.   I hope the tags that I have chosen are appropriate and help to identify my digital content?    With the huge amount of  metadata out there in cyberspace you sometimes wonder how search engines find anything!

http://cjc24.global2.vic.edu.au/2013/04/24/vic-pln-unit-4/