Search Me!

When a search term is not a keyword

Yesterday was back to school day, and I had the pleasure of spending it with fabulous librarian Anna Koval of the Big House Library. We were discussing student research projects, and what—given a limited time—students need to learn first about using search engines.

I believe that the advanced search engine functions (site:, filetype:, and the like) are amazing tools for the thoughtful searcher, but the very first skill one has to learn is the thoughtfulness itself. Since search engines essentially match the words you enter, the number one rule for good searching is simply this: really think about what you put in, and better quality stuff will come out.

This is especially difficult when you are looking for “invisible” concepts—that is, ideas that are often expressed without the words that we use to define them. Think “statistics.” We all know what statistics are—we “know them when we see them”—but they are often recorded without actually using the word itself. Other times, the kinds of statistics we want are expressed in so many different ways it is hard to know which ones to ask our search engine for. If we are simply looking for percentage of US citizens who are homeless, just that idea can be expressed as percentage, percent, or %. Search engines like Google will look for the former two terms, but cannot even see the latter. In the same way, if one of Anna’s seniors wanted to find forecasts for childhood obesity, they would also have to contend with predictions and projections.

So, this is where visualization really comes into play. Say I want to know various public policy goals regarding childhood obesity. In past years, I would have used visualization to brainstorm a list of search terms—imaging all the different ways I had seen an idea expressed: [“childhood obesity” priorities OR goals OR targets OR seeks OR returning]. Now, however, I am working smarter. I really think about the sentences, and realize there is one commonality in the writing I see about the topic when I search Google:

"..implement our six policy priorities for reversing the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015...."

"...The goal, as set out in a report from the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, is to reduce childhood obesity from 20% to 5% by 2030...." 

"... The report targets a real cut of 2.5% in obesity rates by 2015 and another ..."

The common form of expression in every single sentence on the topic is actually the phrase “by 20xx.” Generally speaking, the years projected tend to run from 2015 to around 2050, meaning that the concept can be easily retrieved making use of Google’s excellent number range search (..) with the search: [“childhood obesity” “by 2015..2050”], with which I ask for pages with the phrase “childhood obesity,” and the phrase “by 2015,” or “by 2020,” or “by 2025,” and so on, up to “by 2050.”

So Anna and I started discussing how we could introduce this kind of visualization to her students. Anna introduced me to AwesomeHighlighter.com, a tool for virtually highlighting online articles, and we practiced one of my favorite skills—reading a Washington Post article on childhood obesity not just for information, but also for search terms that can be used to build enhanced searches.

There are three categories of search terms we found:

1)   1) basic terminology we would need to search for more information, such as obesity epidemic;

2)   2) sources of more authoritative information, such as the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity; and,

3)   3)associated search terms, such as by 20xx, which appeared four different times in the article with related statistics.

Teaching how to read for terminology and authorities is relatively straightforward. Reading for associated search terms is harder, but should drive home the concept that visualization can suggest creative and productive queries. So it is a tricky, but worthwhile, task.

My goal is to experiment over the next few months, and start to build a list of associated search terms for searching news sources. I’ll be sure to share. Can you think of any more examples to help me get started?

 

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."

Youth Safety on a Living Internet

The Online Safety and Technology Working Group just finished their government-mandated report to Congress, entitled "Youth Safety on a Living Internet." I have great respect for many of the folks who wrote it, with whom I am in a group focused on at-risk behavior of youth online. 

Taking a nuanced view of fears about children's online behavior, this report “points to the growing importance of online citizenship and media-literacy education, in addition to what has come to be seen as online safety education, as solutions to youth risk online.”

You can read a blog post by one of the authors or dig into the whole report.

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.

Understanding Google's Automatic Synonym Searches

I had a great experience last week that brought together my work with kids and with adults.

One of my favorite searcher hang-outs is Irina Shamaeva’s Boolean Strings group on LinkedIn. Cutting-edge professionals in recruiting and sourcing make heavy use of the special syntax of search engines, and so tend to gather online and discuss strategies. Since they are excited to talk all day about unexpected ways to tweak various search tools to get what you want, I can think of few places I’d rather be!

By chance, a Boolean Strings user asked great question on the same day I’d dealt with it in a third-grade classroom: Why is Google returning results containing substitute search terms, related to the ones I entered…some of the time?

I teach that using a search engine successfully is predicated upon choosing exactly the words that appear on the page you desire for your search query. However, many adults (and kids) push back, noting that Google automatically searches for more words than they type in.

Take, for example, one child who was preparing to write a paper for Model UN. He was searching [cape verde tb]. (Remember, the [ ] replicate a search box into which you type your query, so this search is simply entered into Google as cape verde tb.) I noted that a lot of documents would spell out tuberculosis, and so shouldn’t he do the same? He simply pointed at his screen, where Google had returned results with either tb or tuberculosis, and showed me that whenever each of these terms appeared it was bolded, indicating Google had used it as a search terms.

 

The problem, we discovered on further investigation, was that Google did make the substitution of a related term for tb, but it did not make an automatic substitution for Cape Verde, which is often referred to by its Portuguese name, Cabo Verde. The same happened to the student researching the clothing worn by the Egyptian God, Geb, for whom dress got automatically substituted for clothing, but got results where costume appeared unbolded—and so we knew Google had not searched for it. Likewise, there was the sourcer who got results for CNM when he searched [Certified Nurse Midwife], but did not get PA when he searched [Physician Assistant]. (Thanks for the inspiration, George!)

What is happening? Generally speaking, Google tracks every search done by users (not who did them, just what they did). Some of the back-end programming notes when many, many people run the same searches, and after a while it starts to subtly and automatically tweak your search terms. For example, after millions of people search for [tuberculosis] and then searched again for [tb], or even [tuberculosis OR tb], Google "learns" that they mean the "same" thing, and will look for them both. However, in the example above, while untold numbers of people may have taught Google about the tb/tuberculosis connection, apparently there have not yet been enough [cape OR cabo verde] searches to link those two ideas, so Google is not able to compensate. The same programming is used, with the same inconsistencies, to fuel the "related terms" search (e.g., [chess ~glossary]).

A helpful feature, but inconsistent. Even dangerous to quality results if you depend on it. So what is a user to do?

As annoying as it sounds, if you don’t know for a fact precisely what substitutions Google is making on your behalf, you must use OR in your searches. The student who already observed the connection between tb and tuberculosis can simply use [tb]. But for a term like clothing, until that student knows what is being substituted, he should always try a string of search terms like [clothing OR dress OR costume OR wearing OR wore]. 

My take away: Always include the terms you want to search—don’t depend on Google to do it for you!

Your thoughts?

Ad or Information?

I teach a lot of avid readers, plus a healthy number of kids who do not really love reading much. One thing that the savvier non-readers and readers have in common is a sense of page layout in non-fiction books. After all, books have become such a visual feast compared to when I was a kid—which is wonderful for our children, but is changing how kids approach reading for information.

For data-mongers and reluctant readers alike, one of the first things they learn is to look to margin boxes, those stripes in a contrasting color down the outer margin of the page, to find the most intense concentration of information.

(Source: Doherty, Gillian, et al. "Australia and Oceania—Political." The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia Of World Geography with Complete World Atlas. London: Usborne Publishing, 2004. 284-285.)

I find, as a result, that my students tend to identify the stripe down the side of many web pages right away, and go looking there first for information. As adults, we recognize that these are often ads.

However, ads can appear to match a student’s information need very closely. So, a student looking at a page on the Titanic may see links to “The Passengers of the Titanic” and “1912 Titanic (1000s of Products—Sale!),” which can appear highly relevant and entice the student to click.

To the experienced book-reader, the location of these links on the page suggests that they are the “good stuff.” They get confused and frustrated very quickly as they try to access it.

One of my favorite examples recently is a local high school teacher who tells me that his students cite Amish Fireplace ads as sources in their history papers, and do not recognize even more explicit advertisements for what they are—instead thinking of them as information that is “easy to read.”

Unless we actively teach kids about page layout online—where they might expect to find ads and vocabulary that will help identify them (“ads,” “sponsored links,” "sponsored results," "sponsored sites," "preferred partners," etc.), even strong readers will be missing a critical component of their online literacy.

My take away: Teach kids to distinguish ads from content.

What’s yours?