Search Engines

After reading this article in Wired, I wonder how much of current searching problems could have been solved by sending more students to the library to learn how to do research from real librarians or by allowing English teachers the time to teach how to do research—well, not just English. Really, it should have been all subjects since research skills are vital for everyone. The last year I taught, I had seniors, and we were doing a pretty simple research activity to learn about the library since many of them had not stepped one foot into their high school library—as seniors. I gave them several questions to answer using indexed terms, but more than once I had students hold up the book and ask, “do I really have to read this whole book to find the answer?” So many of them did not realize there was an index at the back of the book and that all they had to do was look for a keyword from the question to find the pages with the answer. When I taught sophomores, I had to figure out a way to include research into my lessons since it was not included in what we were supposed to teach since research skills are not tested on the TAKS; yet, when these students get to college they have no clue how to write a research paper. Then search engines come along and prove useful by rewarding silly searches from time to time, encouraging poor research behaviors. So it is frustrating to read articles like this one from Wired when instead we should move back to learning how to do good searches instead of coming up with new techniques. If not, libraries are going to have to figure out how to get their catalogs and databases searchable by Google, Bing, and now Blekko so that students can find good resources.

Sorry for the rant. NaNoWriMo update:

I decided to use the last two Ten Minute exercise results combined for my story for NaNoWriMo. I went to the first write-in, which was at the IHOP on 59 at Kirby. It was quite enjoyable and really helpful. I will definitely have to do it again next year, and I highly recommend it to all. We took up nearly a whole dining room in the IHOP. There must have been about thirty people there all typing away on their computers, chatting a bit about getting stuck, being supportive, and weirding out the other guests. It was funny watching the other diners out of the corner of my eye. They would walk in and see all of us at our computers. Sit and guess with their friends about what was going on. When they'd had enough guessing, one of the group would lean over and ask the nearest person what was going on. I had my earbuds in but every now and again I could make out "50,000?!?" and "30 days?!?" I never heard the rest but I can imagine...

The other good part about these write-ins are the word wars. The moderator sets a timer for fifteen minutes (or ten depending on group consensus, I suppose) and then everyone participating writes as much as they can for the time limit. Once the time is up, everyone stops and counts their words from the point where they started for the word war. The winner gets a prize and all the participants get a boost in their word count. I came in second at last night's word war, which really did help. I did 810 words in fifteen minutes, which helped me to achieve my daily goal. Today I need to go back and read and edit a bit of what I wrote last night so that I can continue tonight. I should also start making some decisions about where this story is headed. I'm thinking about posting the story as I write here on the blog. I need to make that decision, too. Oh, and my total word count for today: 2003.