Showing posts with label challenges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label challenges. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Search Practice

Since last April, Google has published a daily search challenge called 'agoogleaday'.

These little challenges have only one correct answer but many ways to arrive at the answer. Since these are similar to the Search Challenges found in my blog, I thought I'd take a closer look.

Agoogleaday was created by Dan Russell as a daily trivia game to encourage creativity and search practice. Unlike the Internet Search Challenges found here, there is no timer or focus on a specific search technique or strategy and the search engine returns results only prior to April 2011. More on that shortly.

A nice feature of the puzzles is the hints that show effective keywords. This kind of scaffolding could be helpful to students. I found that I was able to solve some without searching at all, since I knew the answer to begin with. But the notion of practicing search skills has value.

Why return results that are no newer than April 2011?  According to the author, this is to prevent people from spoiling the puzzles for others by posting the answers online. This doesn't prevent people from posting the answers, it only prevents the Deja Google search engine from retrieving them. At one time I was concerned about this with my Search Challenges as well, but it hasn't proved to be a problem. In fact, people have posted the challenge questions online hoping someone will provide an answer. Most of the answers I've seen are incorrect, which ironically makes the challenges ever better and drives home the point that you need to evaluate the information you find online.

One aspect of agoogleaday for me has a less-than-positive connotation for learning and that is 'every search has one right answer.' While it may be appropriate for trivia puzzles, it is not how information usually works. There is seldom one right answer for significant questions. If the questions educators are asking students have only one right answer, we're not requiring enough thought from students. Or as David Thornburg has quipped, don't ask students questions that can be answered by searching Google (or posted by spoilers). You can still use a search engine. You just have to use your head to figure out a good answer.

That makes it more challenging both for the teacher and the student. And that's a good thing.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Information Students Care About

Motivation, no doubt, is a factor in how well students search, evaluate and use digital information. If you really care about the information you seek and find, you'll probably do some things differently.

If the motivation is extrinsic or intrinsic may matter less than if the information is deemed important or not. For many, it may boil down to 'do I really care about this information?'

Please understand, I'm a huge fan of intrinsic motivation. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was my dissertation chair. I aim for flow in most of what I do. Learning (in the long run) is better when intrinsically motivated. But extrinsic motivation is also effective at getting results (think: grades, money, respect, etc.). School assignments are typically structured with extrinsic incentives--or punishments--because students won't do them voluntarily. Things like grades and privileges are effective short-term motivators.

Searching, evaluating and using information are generally short-term tasks. Of these three, thorough evaluation may involve considerable time and effort, but as presented in most assignments, these three are seen as stepping stones--sub-tasks--to a larger task of learning subject-matter. If students really care about the subject matter--if they think it is important--they may perform better at these sub-tasks.

Most of the challenges I offer through this blog try to be relevant to students, but they may not be important. I'd have to know the interests of specific students to do a better job at choosing challenges based on importance. What I have to opt for is a range of topics that involve searching (and evaluation) competencies.

Librarians and teachers who work with specific students, on the other hand, can offer 'important' search challenges. To that end, the examples you find here are representative searches. They may or may not work well because students care or don't care about them. The challenge for educators is to find--or create--challenges students really do care about. That, I believe, will help achieve more lasting results and greater information fluency.