Search Engine Activity

[Lori Holcomb]

Share your experiences from this activity and what lessons you learned. What goal/skill of 21st century learning does this activity highlight? What impact does this have on teaching and learning?

[Jennifer Tingen]

As I searched each search engine using the same term, I instantly became aware of the effect this could have on young children. On Google.com, a Hurricane Katrina search led me to an image, Wikipedia, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website, informational sites, and a YouTube link. While each of these resources could help a child better understand Hurricane Katrina, he or she must be able to exercise information and media literacy to know if the source is credible. College students have trouble with this concept, so younger children will indeed have trouble analyzing various forms of information. As educators, we must ensure that information literacy is a top concern for the 21st century. Furthermore, students must understand the concepts of critical thinking and systems thinking. 21st Century students must have the ability to make complex choices regarding research sources, particularly those found on the World Wide Web.

The search for information regarding the Tiananmen Square was quite interesting. U.S. sites typically had results including images, Wikipedia, and News websites. The Chinese Google search, however, had results primarily of tourism sites, as well as an encyclopedia. Most search findings included similar information, but the sources and order of results were quite different for each search engine. With the abortion search, for example, Google instantly led me to informational sources (Wikipedia, Planned Parenthood) while Ask.com and Yahoo.com led me to services and specialists before the more informational sources were listed. Each search engine eventually led me to religious and News websites, as well as the National Abortion Federation.

Another 21st Century Skill that this activity brings to light is the need for our students to develop a financial, economic, and business literacy. By keeping the marketing methods of search engines in mind, students will be better able to recognize a reliable source when compared with one that would like to sell a product, idea, service, or all three!

[Lori Holcomb]

Jennifer, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this activity. I am going to wait for a few more people to chime in before I jump in but you comments are a great starting point for this discussion.

[Kaitlin]

I started to do this assignment at my elementary school in my classroom because I am in midst of moving and don’t have the internet. However, I was unable to look at several of the sites that appeared. One of the sites was Wikipedia. Then I considered what Jennifer wrote and I assume that my school blocked that site so if students do research they aren’t allowed to use it. I remember in college they talked about how we weren’t able to use that site as a resource. I assumed there are many different websites out there just like Wikipedia, where people can post what they please but how are students to know when we don’t know as adults. I noticed for all of the topics when I search on google, Wikipedia was the first site given. I too was brought to a you.tube site. Although the site can have some valuable information some students don’t know that anyone can post material on that site and a lot of clips are home videos, so you don’t know just what you will see or what kind of language the video contains.
When I searched Tiananmen Square on the Chinese google for pictures, I noticed that some of the pictures were a lot more graphic than the American version google. I would agree with Jennifer in that most sites give you the same information just in a different order. Except when I searched abortion on yahoo and altavista expert kind abortion care for 225.00 appeared and when searching abortion on google that site did not appear. However google gave me options to see Biden’s views on abortion.
I know these topics are controversial but when searching you are given hundreds of sites and for a child even a high school or college student it can be hard to define what fact is and what is not. Students need to be given information about what to look for to determine a valid source. Sometimes people just want to get their opinion out there for people to read and others have no way of telling if something is researched based.

[Rhonda W]

Interesting perspective. When I was in college there was no such thing as the Internet. I had to learn all by myself that Wikipedia is interesting but not always reliable or valid. I'm not sure the best way to handle this for students is to block the site. It would be better to teach them how to determine for themselves whether or not a site is an authoritative source of information.

[Donia Winslow]

I can see both points. However, Wikipedia is too tempting to our students and like everyone has pointed out...it is generally the first source when using google. Yet, it is better to teach them how to filter through valid versus non-valid information.

[Jennifer Cable]

Jennifer,
Great point about the financial, economic, and business aspect of search engines. I have heard that companies pay to have their sites listed first or near the top. This is scary to think that someone with a lot of money can be listed first even if they don't have accurate information. Great point.
Jennifer C.

[Kim Davis]

Hey -

I would be interested in knowing if what you heard about how the different search sites list their results. I heard that Google lists them by number of hits with the most hits site at the top then the rest in descending order.

Kim

[Loretta Batchelor]

Tiananmen Square—I searched the following:

US Google and found the following sites: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 - 195k
abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5477517. One of the sites is Wikipedia which I sometimes question the validity of the information since people can edit it. The abc news site is legitimate as a media outlet. I also searched Yahoo! and found the following site: www.answers.com/topic/tiananmen-square. It is a site that links you with information that answers your key words. Chinese Google: gave me the following sites: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCQp0UMuDI - 119k, www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ou2-Kv4UA - 112k. These are youtube sites where videos are posted by individuals. Last, I searched Alta Vista: and found the following sites:
www.answers.com/topic/tiananmen-square and www.thebeijingguide.com/tiananmen_square/index.html. The Beijing guide is a media outlet in China which is as legitimate as a media outlet.

When I Googled Hurricane Katrina I found the following site: www.hhs.gov/katrina/. This is the health and human services goverment site. This site is a legitimate site based on the government services.

I searched Dog Pile and it gave me this site: www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/. CNN is a legitimate national media outlet.
The following were the other sites I found based on the search engine listed.
Yahoo! www.nola.com/katrina
www.cityofno.com/pg-1-245.aspx

Abortion
Yahoo!:www.abortionfacts.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion

Google:
www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/abortion
www.abortion.com/

Dog Pile:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion
www.novahc.com/

In summary, the sites are only as legitimate as their source. I have many students that think Wikipedia is the answer to all questions. I have to explain to them that it is a wiki which can be edited by many different people. The news media sites are usually informative though the facts may be skewed a bit. The best sites are usually those that are easy to navigate, have language that is easily understood, and has a name of who wrote the article or is responsible for the information.

There are soo many websites these days it is very confusing in deciding which ones are correct and which ones are fake.
Loretta

[Staci Lyon]

I am sure that many of us will use Google as one of our search engines as it has become the most popular and widely used. It is even used in our daily language now..."just Google it". I also used Altavista and Lycos for this activity.

So needless to say, I used Google to search initially on abortion. The first two sites were Wikipedia and Planned Parenthood as Jennifer has already mentoned. The site also offered sites geared towards teens seeking information on abortion. I thought it was very interesting that the related searches provided were about our two presidential candidates. As we are approaching the presidential election, it is cool to see how Google is taking a non-biased approach to providing information to those that may not be initially seeking it.

When I searched using Altavista and Lycos, the exact same top 5 sponsor websites were shown at the top of both sites. The second of which was "What Mystics Know About Abortion?". I must say, I didn't expect a site such as this show up as early as it did. I was intrigued so I looked at the site. I talks about the view of theosophy on abortion. Basically it clearly states that abortion is murder. As mentioned this is a touchy subject and boy would this site rub some people the wrong way. I think the impact of this site could be powerful. It's doesn't provide facts, but then again I think the facts are pretty clear. I guess I just wasn't expected such a viewpoint to be found so easily, but who am I to say that it shouldn't be. I suppose if someone is seeking to make a decision on something so important they should be well informed on all sides before making that decision. I think it is interesting that these sponsor links are the first sites you see.

The searches on Hurricane Katrina brought up more links to news sites. More links to governmental sites were provided for searchers to find information. Additionally, videos were provided to allow viewers to witness the damage and heartache caused by the storm. The images provided are also very powerful. I didn't think about looking the images provided for the search on abortion so I went back and viewed it...boy do I wish I hadn't!!

My search for Tiananmen Square seemed to turn up more consistent information that the other two subjects with Wikipedia being the first link on each search engine. The sites seemed to provide a lot of information and facts. Not as much with opinions or religion as with the abortion sites.

All in all, as mentioned by other students, with so much information readily available to students, it is important that they are taught what information can be trusted and how to gather information without relying on one source. I think Wikipedia provides a lot of informatio that could be a good starting place for students, but again they must understand that this information is provided by any and everybody and can easily be inaccurate. Additionally, students should be willing to use other search engines when searching for information because some engines may bring forward sites that another search engine may have a little further on the list.

With so much information readily available through the Internet, I think it's very easy to have information overload!

[Kyleen Burgess]

I searched each search engine using the same terms provided to us in the assignment, deviating from those could result in other results, even if you don't use firefox (who checks your spelling) and misspell a word. The three search engines I used were Yahoo!, Google and ask.com. I was going to use a metabrowser such as dogpile, but that would combine results for the big 4 - Yahoo!, Google, MSN and ask, although it would have saved time on the activity I would not be able to tell you how each site ranked search results.

On the topic of Tianamen Square I found that Google, Yahoo and Ask eventually gave me the same results, just in different order. I found that for each search engine Wikipedia came up as the first response. I am not sure if I agree with that choice simply because lets face it Wikipedia isn't that reliable, as any person can write a review and it be posted for awhile before the staff at Wikipedia checks the facts. I did Chinese Google and saw that it mostly led to the tourist aspect of the location.
Their imagines as others have noted were a bit more graphic.

In the search for abortion I found it interesting to note that Ask.com gave me phone numbers of providers that could perform the procedure. Then after listing about three providers it gave me wikipedia, government health websites and news articles related to abortion. Yahoo and Google gave results both of which began at Wikipedia. Yahoo!'s second choice site was religioustolerance.org, then the national abortion federation and planned parenthood. Google's second choice was planned parenthood, abortion facts, news results, clinics and then religioustolerance.org.

On the last topic Hurricane Katrina I started looking on Yahoo! first. Yahoo! listed news articles, then gave a link for New Orleans (Nolo.org), the listed news agencies such as the NY Times and finally the good old Wikipedia had to make the rounds. On Google the same happened except the news links were listed first (perhaps because of the hurricane that is now brewing off the gulf coast), followed by governmental agency websites such as HHS, NOAA and the Whitehouse. Ask.com listed Wikipeida as the first resource followed by government agencies and news links.

21st century students must have the the skills to decipher what websites are relabel. In order to understand which websites are relabel we must assist students in understanding the concepts of critical thinking, which will assit them in making choices in their research sources. I do agree with Jennifer that we must also educate students on financial, economic and business literacy to so that they are able to use their critical thinking skills in combination with these skills to decipher websites that can be used as resources rather than those that are marketing ploys.

[Zeynep Yurtseven]

When I started this activity, I first searched for `search engines`. Before this search I did not know there are a lot of them.

While searching for search engines I recognized you can be very specific depending on your purpose. For example in wikipedia there was a list of engines. They were catagorized by various topics including `Geographical limited scope`. This gave me a chance to reach some specific engines.

I searched for `Tiananmen Square` in 5-7 engines. The most known ones like google, livesearch, yahoo gave results from Wikipedia, and news about the 1989 ptotest; while Chinees sites gave general and touristic information about Tiananmen Square. One of the engines, which is a Chineese search engine `Accoona`gave some current news about China.

For the `abortion` topic, I got almost the same results in different engines except the `iSEEK`, which was a educational search engine. Most of the engines I searced gave some commercial sites for abortion. `google` had some results which you can get general information about the topic. Some engines gave the websites about the religious point of view.The first result in `iSEEK` was a university website which was really instructive.

There was not a big change of results for the `Hurricane Katrina` search.

After all these searching experience I got some implications:

One of the biggest part of the 21st learning is obviously `internet`, and an unavoidable thing while using internet is searching for something. Thus students will do this for several times in their education process. To get the correct, accurate, most useful information,they must know what is important for searching. They must have a decision-making skill. Because of their coverage, the engines have
really diferent resources, so that student must have a critical- thinking skill to criticize their results. To ease their job,we must give them some criteria as educators.

[Zeynep Yurtseven]

I also learnt a lot about search engines. For example I liked the `cuil`, which is a new one. It gives different websites in the same page with pictures, so you can decide easily what you are really looking for.

And the `iSEEK` also good for educational purposes. When I sarched `Tiananmen Square` and `abortion` in this site, I got reaaly interesting results. It gave some universities`s pages, some student homeworks about topic. One thing I got from this site while searching Hurricane Katrina was a project which has the same name. It was also really intersting to me.

Additionally, I think, we must have some really good creteria about media`s credibility. When we got information from internet, most of the resources would be media including newspaper archives. Thus we must have an idea about media news,and which ones are more credible.