TEDx Talk: What we learned from 5 million books

I discovered the Google Ngram Viewer from this TED Talk by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel who are both fellows at Harvard University and Visiting Faculty at Google. They created the tool to analyse the millions of books being digitised by Google to allow them to search for cultural trends.

Using the Ngram Viewer would certainly be an interesting data handling lesson for children!

Will Google+ Encourage us to Sidestep Serendipity?

tangent

Since leaving the classroom I have had the opportunity to read more widely then I have done at any point over the last 10 years. The work I am doing now takes me down paths including design thinking, business, social media and of course education. It is the variety of new domains of information and perspectives that I have found so engaging.

Not only have I been able to work with and immerse myself in ideas from outside of education but I have begun to see ways learning can benefit from them.

I have seen Twitter grow and grow into a huge global tool for educators. However those of us using it are still, for the most part, in the minority. However difficult it is to admit it, teachers using any digital tool to connect with fellow teachers are still in the minority. The prospect of a new social tool, such as Google+, was hugely exciting to see. It was great to start in a fresh space with the customary intuitive interface we have come to expect from Google products. So all rosy? Well not quite.

My main concern is a key difference between Twitter and Google+. When Twitter users connect with each other they basically ask themselves is this person interesting or in my line of work? Yes = follow. We all have our different methods but I suspect that covers most people. When I look at those people who have followed me on Twitter recently I can see very quickly (on a single page which I can just scroll up and down) what they do from their profile and just click follow if a) they interest me or b) they are in education. That’s it.

Importantly with Twitter there are no ways to target your messages to groups within those who follow you, it is an “all in” sort of method. My updates go to designers, teachers, classes, professors, executives, artists, whoever makes up your network. Do I think this adds value to the replies and perspectives you gain? Absolutely.

With Google+ Circles are we creating silos of information? By saying to users, “do you only want to share with those that find it 100% relevant?”, are we in fact encouraging a narrowing of perspectives? What about those that might find it 60% relevant? Or whose current project makes it highly relevant to them, but perhaps not at other times. Of course we have the choice to make things public in Google+ and the choice to have different circles, but Twitter’s default broadcast state is always set to public. An open style of sharing is not a choice.

Perhaps targeted sharing, in the style of a Google+ post, will just give me what I always get. The isolation of ideas, fuzzy-warm acceptance but nothing to challenge them. Alternate expertise has no way of peaking in or seeping into the reaction.

Of course this idea of cross-fertilising ideas from different domains has a strong history with, for example, Innovation Time Off or 20% time from Google or bootlegging product development at 3M that led to the early concept of the Post-It note.

I think I will probably not use the Circles feature of Google+ because I think that I will be limiting the reactions I get and actively avoiding the opportunity to connect with other professionals who could add a valuable perspective beyond education. I still prefer a model that is more open by default and puts the responsibility of information filtering on the consumer, not the producer of the information.

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Pic Back of Beyond by violscraper

Are Online Behaviours Affecting Reading Skills?

In my final weeks of school our class had our usual Tuesday afternoon guided reading session, where we get the opportunity to work on some reading text with a small group of children. One particular comment from a pupil has stuck in my mind, so I thought I would share some of my reflections with you.

Whilst exploring a text we came across a particular word that became the focus of our attention. Although the group had no problem reading and pronouncing it they didn’t know what it meant. I aimed to set the children off exploring the definition from the information we could acquire from the sentence and the text overall, we may have even cracked open a dictionary or two…

“We could just Google it!”

As you can see the comment from one of the group stuck in my mind for a number of reasons. Firstly it indicated to me how much web searching had become part of how these 9 and 10 years olds process the information they see in the world. The concept of search applies to so much around them and the need for a better understanding of how we instruct and guide our classes to filter what they find, has never been so more acute.

Equally the appropriateness of using different tools is a key part of navigating the learning landscape, indeed one of the most difficult aspects is helping young learners make better decisions regarding the tools they use.

Of course I was not surprised by this comment after all many of the children have Kindles and the latest model has a full Oxford English Dictionary available on it. The children simply have to move a cursor and the definition will be displayed on the screen at the bottom. I remember writing lists of words I didn’t know from texts during my English degree and finding out later.

The immediacy of information and indeed the expectation for it is all to clear. We expect results, definitions and answers faster nowadays and so do the children in our classes. The question is what are we doing about it?


Googledictionaryplugin

Within the browser too you have access to dictionary tools to help when you are reading online. I use Google Chrome’s extension which allows you to double-click a word and a little pop-up dictionary definition appears. I use this loads – no more written lists of vocabulary for me!

Another reason the comment struck a chord with me is how the decision to Google a word comes ahead of trying to establsish meaning from reading skills, such as reading into the context and exploring the sentence further. Of course, this one comment should not be over played. However in my opinion it does hint at the ways children are thinking about processing the information, from reading material or otherwise, we work with everyday.

I am of course an advocate for the appropriate use of technology, where it can transform learning and add value – and in this instance it is not a “this skill replaces that skill” scenario but an opportunity to reflect on the ways we can enhance what we do and take advantage of ideas children have.

To answer my own question in the title, yes they are in a broadly positive way, but especially children in primary school or elementary need support and guidance to help them filter the information they search. They need contextualised examples and ongoing references to the ways we search and use information tools – I think this is a pivotal aspect of teaching and can only become more acute in the coming years.

 

Shared Search – Sign Up to Help Out

I have a new crowd-sourcing idea up my sleeve that needs your help and input. It is all based around the idea of a collaborative search engine that can be constructed together – Shared Search.

Elevator Pitch

  • A community of educators work together on a Google custom search engine (CSE).
  • The CSE can be for any specific topic taught in the classroom.
  • A new CSE is created and collaborators are invited (like Google Docs) to add suitable sites.
  • Labels are added to the sites to filter their relevance, this can be used in the search results too – which means it can be relevant to different age groups.
  • Up to 100 collaborators can be invited to any one CSE.
  • The broader the pool of contributions the richer the search experience for the pupil.
  • The code will be shared to educators who want to embed it in their schools sites and blogs.
  • The community generate a growing library of relevant search engines for different curriculum topics.

So what do you think? Are you interested in helping with the first one. I have set up a search engine about SEALIFE, as this is a common topic and one that has a huge amount of content.

The idea of a Shared Search is that we act as first filter to the children’s own experience of searching online content.

If you have some underwater web gems to share please sign up in the form below and look out for the email invite into the Custom Search Engine. I look forward to seeing your response and I hope that we can once again help create something valuable together.

Why not try out the “SEALIFE” Shared Search below. Remember as more people contribute sites the more useful it will become.

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