Search Me!

Predict Before You Click

When search enginges like Google give you a list of search results, is there any way to tell which results are authoritative without going to look at them all? Educating students about how to read search engine results pages can inspire them to select quality sources. To learn more, please check out my article, recently published in American Association of School Librarians' journal, Knowledge Quest (Jan/Feb, 2010), entitled: "Predict Before You Click: Search Engine Results as the First Defense of Authority."

Page Cleaners Make Webpages More Readable

Today, I am sharing some excellent tools for un-cluttering Web pages so we can actually experience their content. Imagine reading without flashing ads or watching videos without the profanity in the viewer comments.

After all, would you be more successful reading this page?

…or this one?

 

 

So here are some of the page cleaners I have identified so far.

Please add any other tools you know of this kind in the comments below, and give feedback from your experience on the ones listed here. I am new to these resources, but cannot wait to share!

Clean pages for easy reading:

·    Readability

Readability was the first of these page cleaners I encountered, and it has worked beautifully for me, though some in the bloggosphere have had trouble with it. It takes about ten seconds to set up and drag to your bookmark bar, then you just click the bookmark any time you are on a page that needs cleaning.

·Tofu

A download for Macs. Creates pages in narrow, newspaper-like columns. Has a very easy find feature, and has a voice-activated scroll feature. 

·    TidyRead

Several bloggers seem to prefer this one to Readability, but I have had more trouble with it than the other tool. You can make an account and save favorites.

·    CleanPage 

Runs on Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000 with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above (fee-based). Download.

Page cleaning plus:

·    Instapaper  

This page cleaner (which many people use in conjunction with Readability) allows you to create a queue of pages or articles to read later. You can access them online, but Instapaper also synchs to Kindles, iPhones, iPads, and iTouches, so you can read them anywhere, anytime.

Clean Videos for trouble-free sharing:

·   Quietube

Another drag-and-drop bookmarklet. Easy to create links (or TinyURLs) that can be e-mailed to others, so that you can share “clean” copies of the video.

·    Safeshare TV 

A website where you past in videos, or drag as a bookmarklet.

·    Silentube 

   A bookmarklet.

A huge thank you to Kelly Geigner of Teacher Tracks for introducing me to Readability in response to my post about distinguishing ads from information, and raising my awareness of this world of applications.

Wikipedia as a Steppingstone Resource

I subscribe to several listservs that have been overtaken in recent days with very detailed and important conversations about Wikipedia. Although initially skeptical about Wikipedia (I do value the authority of my books, despite the fact that I have almost never worked in a library that has any on site!), my basic philosophy about research is that we need to start from where kids are, and then demonstrate that their own research strategies should naturally lead them to where we want them to be. In following this path, I have discovered for myself just what an important role Wikipedia plays in great, inquiry-rich research.

 I start almost all my research online. Although I may have created my own personal decimal system for my home library at age 10, I don't really believe that we have a way of organizing print resources that really, truly, deeply makes sense to the majority of people, and I find that the Internet gives us great tools for defining our research process. I use the Web to find out what I need to be reading about (scope and content), define search terms and vocabulary, find the sources I *should* be using, and then move on to high-quality online and offline sources.

 Of the intermediate sources I use to identify these guidelines--my "steppingstone resources"--Wikipedia is critical. I can get the background on my topic (so I don't have to waste time doing that in source after source, now I can focus and *inquire*), identify the vocabulary that "reliable" sources will be using to talk about my subject (thus making good-quality sources searchable--since I know what to *look for,* and what it would be *called* by someone speaking intelligently about it), construct a basic reading list, and even (and, I believe, importantly) read for points of inquiry--that is, identify what it is about a topic that interests me and think about what unique direction I would like my research to take. Wikipedia can usually help meet all of these needs.

 For example, I recently had a parent tell me that when her middle school -aged daughter had to do a report about Benjamin Franklin. She would not let the girl go online, but gave her ten books from the library. Otherwise, she was afraid, her daughter would use the "same three websites as every other kid." Books first is certainly a legitimate approach, and the one we grew up with, for sure. But I believe that if we taught research properly--especially Wikipedia--this "top three websites" problem would cease to be an issue. For example, I consider myself to be a relatively educated person. Yet, when I just look at the TOC of Benjamin Franklin's Wikipedia site I get very excited by things I do not remember learning. He studied oceanography? Meteorology (direction of wind vs. storm)? Chess? These are new ideas to me. I think that ten students could look at this article, and pick ten different directions in which to travel. Once I decide to learn more about why Franklin ended up in the US Chess Hall of Fame, I am quickly led to really unique and interesting resources (with clear pointers to some amazing primary sources, many of which are easily available online). I dare say this is more (1) engaging and (2) educational that reading through ten books selected by their common attribute of being on the library shelf when the mother went to get them.

Wikipedia is not a source that I beleive should be cited in a student paper, but I beleive it is an important steppingstone on the path to inquiry.

How do you feel about Wikipedia? I am always curious to hear what you, your teachers, your librarians, and other influencers in your life have to say about it!

Really Understanding Wikipedia

The third grade at one of my schools is just completing a project designed to help them understand the debate over quality of information on Wikipedia. They wrote student reports on an individual ancient Egyptian god or goddess. We then took them into Simple English Wikipedia--intended for younger/ESL students--and taught them how to select information appropriate to Wikipedia (no opinions, etc.), and how to input/edit Wikipedia. Now, other people are editing their contributions (which, of course, each of these thrid graders *knows* to be true and completely correct exactly as s/he wrote it). New, interesting information is being added. Their own "perfect" information is being corrected. Their articles are being marked as needing better citation, in some cases. Sometimes, edits even stimulate automated responses from Wikipedia bots, which are then followed up/corrected by human editors. They are truly getting a look at what makes a wiki article happen.

At the same time, they feel proud of using their knowledge to shape a resrouce known round the world.

I am writing, in part, to invite any classes doing work on these same gods and goddesses to join in and edit these articles to help drive the lesson home. The articles are still pretty young and short, which means there are lots of clear opportunities for students to watch their contributions change over time. You can find the deities we have covered here: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Egyptian_gods_and_goddesses. Our inputs are also still in progress, by the way, so your students should also see changes to their additions.

If Egypt is not in your lesson plans, Simple English Wikipedia is pretty lightly populated, and can be used in this manner on most topics.

Thank you to Alan November for suggesting a similar activity in the first place.