Category: Shared Search

My 2010

Blogging, Interesting Ways, QR, Shared Search, SuperheroesPublished on6 Comments on My 2010

I have been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. It has already been one of those books that seems to speak to you directly, one that for whatever reasons strongly resonates with you at exactly the right moment. On his blog he reviewed his year, what he shipped or completed.

Here is mine:

  • Instigated Google Teacher Academy London
  • Organised and ran TeachMeet BETT 2011 [with the amazing help of Stuart Ridout]
  • Presented Google Maps session at Google London HQ for GTA
  • Launched and took part in TeachMeet Takeover
  • Launched Curriculum Catalyst
  • Launched Shared Search
  • Interesting Ways gets it’s first presentation with 50 ideas
  • Google Forms Interesting Ways hits 50 ideas in less than 24 hours
  • Planned and completed a great Superheroes topic
  • Australia topic also a success
  • Started the #classblogs hashtag raising the profile of class blogs
  • Contributed to the Vodaphone Parenting magazine about digital life
  • Got a new job
  • Moved house
  • Got through my first 2 terms as a Deputy Head
  • Installed a new netbook resource at school
  • Found a simple and practical use for QR codes in the classroom
  • Helped teachers in my new school understand the value of class blogging
  • Every class in school has a Posterous blog

It really is amazing to write everything down so simply – I am already looking forward to what 2011 has to offer.

Shared Search – Sign Up to Help Out

Google, Shared SearchPublished onUpdated on8 Comments on 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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