Patent Search Challenge

Dean Kamen

I offered a research session this week for students in a high school entrepreneurship camp called the TALENT UPgrade Experience.  As part of the two week camp, students conduct a lot of online research. For example:

• Is my business name already trademarked?
• Is my product idea, or some part of it, patented?
• How do I find the size of my market?
• Who is my competition?
• Where do I find information about how to ... (fill in the blank, from how to use PHP to add, edit and drop records from an online database, to how to solder photovoltaic cells, to how to boost the signal from a Peltier chip, etc.)

What's nice about this kind of research is that it is interest-driven. Students have personal reasons to search for and evaluate answers. 

To help make sure they know that the first two bullets are Deep Web searches, I provided some challenges.  Here's one of them you may want to try:

CHALLENGE 1: Dean Kamen

What was the title of Dean Kamen's first patent?
How old was he when he filed this patent?


Submit your answers--and how you got them--to this blog.

A Search I Couldn't Find

I'm certain it happens to all of us.  We just can't find something we're looking for. We run out of options and/or energy and have to give up (for now or for good). It's one reason why I consider information research mastery on the Internet to be somewhere around 80%.

This happened to me recently while looking online for information about a musical score. A member of my church (where I'm the music director) recommended an arrangement of a hymn she heard while on vacation. Here's an excerpt from her email:

"I was in Albuquerque in May for my granddaughter's high school graduation; she played a recital on violin accompanied on piano. There was a beautiful arrangement of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, arranged by Paul Bailey and Charles Romer.  It would be a beautiful piece to play on a Sunday morning if you know of a violinist."

Normally, this would be plenty of information to track the piece down to a source.  I was hoping to find a copy to download (for free or a license), but would have settled to find the publisher and order a copy.

A sensible query would be:  come thou font of every blessing paul bailey charles romer.  It's pretty long, but to find the song title and the arrangers, this seems like the best path.  But it doesn't work. In Google, you get about six relevant entries matching the title and arrangers before Charles Dickens references start popping up--apparently the most popular match for Charles. None of the results is a musical score or a path to a score.

Putting quotes around the title is risky. Am I sure the title is spelled correctly or includes only these words?  There is another spelling for fount (font). Putting quotes around the arrangers names may also eliminate all the instances where a middle initial is used. But it's worth a try. Quotes around the title returns 2 results, neither of which is relevant. Quotes around the arrangers names (separately) returns about 6 results, none of which is a musical score. The results are mainly bulletins that shows the song was performed in a service.

Hmm.

I thought I would try a Deep Web search by going to a database of scores and publishers. The biggies in this field (e.g., www.sheetmusicplus.com, jwpepper.com, etc.) don't list the song with these arrangers. There are plenty of arrangements of the song, but by different arrangers. This is starting to feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. But which Deep Web haystack?

Advanced search filters didn't help, limiting results to violin and title or arrangers produced no relevant results that lined up all the information.


I did find the music online and downloaded it. But the granddaughter first had to share a link with me. Sometimes the quickest way is still to ask someone who knows.

There are other clues such as the publisher of the music that may be found just with good searching.  I found that before I gave up. I'll leave that as the challenge. Who published the music? And if you're up for a tough challenge, where can you download a copy?

Tips from Google: What's Missing?

One of my colleague's recent bookmarks caught my eye:  How to solve impossible problems.  

The link is to a story by John Tedesco of the San Antonio Times about Google search guru Daniel Russell who posed a daunting challenge to a room full of investigative journalists:

What’s the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped?

Here's the photo:

What makes this challenge difficult is that there is no direct information about the office from which the picture was snapped.

According to the article, "(Russell) wasn’t asking for a phone number for the skyscraper in the picture, which sounds hard enough. He wanted the phone number of the precise office where the photographer was standing when the picture was taken.  Nothing in that office was even in the photo. Yet in a few minutes, Russell, a research scientist at Google, revealed the answer by paying attention to small details and walking us through a series of smart Google searches."

Yes, most of us don't put Google's full power to use. Advanced features can make searching more surgical.  The article goes on to illustrate Boolean modifiers (what works and doesn't) as well as operators many people haven't tried lately, if ever. It's a good summary; take a look.

But Google is all about finding. Nothing about how good a result may be. This is typical of most students. We laugh when we hear "If it's on the Internet, it must be true," but that's how students actually behave. We're getting better at finding. We've made little progress at evaluating.

It's really not Google's business to tell us what to believe. And we resist attempts at interference when it comes to second-guessing what we want to see--although search engines are paying attention to what we click and are influenced by our choices.  Which is why it becomes all the more important that we develop good investigative habits.

Spoiler Alert
I managed to find an answer I'm pretty sure is right, but there is still some conjecture involved. If you'd like to solve Russell's challenge, go ahead. Answers are easy to find, thanks to Google.  Here's Russell's blog, and some answers.  Did I/they get it right?

Is it a Hoax or not?

Earlier this week, Dennis O'Connor and I offered a 'model lesson' at the ISTE Conference in San Diego. It was a full session, indicating interest in seeing how information fluency may be embedded in a session.

We probably attempted too much for a 60 minute session; we never did get to the fourth mini-lesson. In case you want to see our Lesson Plans for all four segments, you will find them here. Feel free to use them in your teaching.

The target for the lessons is Genochoice.com, a site that allows parents to create designer babies online. Fact checking claims and information on the site quickly turns up Red Flags. Most external references state that the site is a hoax, the claims are bogus.

I agree with bogus, but don't think it's really a hoax. The majority of information is made up. You can't "read" DNA using a thumb scan that is nothing more than a Flash movie embedded in a page. You can't determine if my medical insurance will cover the cost of genetic "improvements" based solely on my name. There's no evidence that you can "fix" genetic disorders. Someday that may be possible, but not yet.

What is a hoax? Most definitions boil down to "a deliberate deception." Some of the more malicious ones also attempt to defraud, which is not the case with Genochoice.  But while the information is deliberate, does it also aim to deceive?  I think it has a different purpose.

The profile of the author is the crux of the matter. It doesn't take long to determine that Virgil Wong is responsible for the content; he also owns the domain name. But is he a deceiver?

The inconsistency comes when you stop to consider why an artist-medical keynote speaker-PhD candidate-hospital webmaster would create a popular hoax site. Wouldn't that harm his reputation?


Bogus and Hoax sites present layers of challenges. Figuring out if they are bogus or a hoax is one layer. Deeper is: why does this site exist?

Students Use What They Know

When your search skills consist of Googling and Browsing, you must make the most of them.

There are other search skills, of course, but you can't use what you don't know.

Try this, for example: who is the registered owner of General Delivery University (easy)? And what is the address of the registered owner (not so easy)?

This is a Deep Web search, if you use Google as your starting point. Google can access the information, but the owner has two addresses. One is easy to find by googling. The other is easy to find using a Deep Web search (searching a different database).

This is an item I included in the current version of Information Researcher. When students give me the wrong answer, I know they've been googling. When they give me the 'right' address, I know they got it from a different database. Students find the wrong address by fact checking the copyright holder's name. Students find the address registered to the domain using something else.  Hopefully, they learn there's more to searching than Google along the way.

I leave this as a Challenge. I'll be changing the assessment item in Information Researcher soon, because the registered owner is 1) now deceased and 2) his ownership of the domain is due to expire within a year.

College Ready Information Fluency

Over the past three months I've been working on Information Researcher, our newest self-paced course for middle school and high school students.

This package will be put to the test soon by 1,000 students enrolled in Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development summer programs. The goal is to strengthen these students' digital research skills, to improve their performance in demanding coursework; to achieve college readiness.

What is college readiness? Answers will vary from institution to institution. We've based our definition on the Digital Information Fluency Model, focusing on competencies that individuals need to "get it right" most of the time.  The "it" is online research and has multiple facets.

The course consists of three parts: a 5-item practice test, 14 tutorials and 10 certification test items. Each item is performance-based and involves live searching and/or evaluating involved in representative school assignments.

The practice test gives students an opportunity to test out of the course. A passing score is 80%, a level that most individuals who have mastered search strategies and techniques can attain. It's not easy. No one passes it without training.  The skills assessed are 1) learning how to use an unfamiliar search engine, 2) using backlinks to evaluate the authority of an unknown source, 3) tracking down the owner of an unknown Web site, 4) fact checking the accuracy of content and authority of a source, 5) determining the freshness of information that lacks a published date.

In addition to these, the tutorials involve students in the following tasks: 6) browsing links to home in on information, 7) using keywords effectively with a search engine, 8) truncating URLs to reveal hidden information, 9) triangulating information to fact check accuracy, 10) using advanced operators to retrieve information, 11) detecting bias, 12) tracking down missing information for reports and citations, 13) deep web searching, 14) finding Red Flags and 15) applying search strategies effectively in a variety of challenges. The posttest incorporates the same competencies.

The target average score for middle school students is 65%; 75% for high schoolers. Before training, average scores are ~40% for middle schoolers and ~50% for high schoolers. Repeated exposure to training leads to even greater improvement.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on what constitutes college readiness in terms of information fluency. And if you'd like to preview a bite-sized portion of the course and give some feedback before we put the course online, let me know by writing to carl@21cif.com.

Fact Checking Spam

Mayotte Islands

Well, spam is good for at least one thing.  Fact checking practice.

Most spam is easily spotted. There are a few types of letters that seem to get replicated. Two of the more popular are: you've been selected to receive some money, or I need some money...  Usually I delete them without much thought, except to wonder why my spam filter lets them through.

In the the "you've been selected" category, I got this today:

From: Mr. Ban Ki-moon

Subject: ONLINE NOTICE!!!!

United Nations has deposited the sum of $10,500,000.00 USD to western union, which is to be shared among you and other 7 Email users.You are entitled to $1,500,000.00 USD in the on-going united nations poverty alleviation program. Please send your Name,Address & Phone Number, email ID:

to union payment center via email (unionpayment768@sify.com) to apply for your payment.Or call Mr. David Young @ +60166561422 for more inquiries on the above message.

Regards,

Mr. Ban Ki-moon

Secretary-General (UNITED NATIONS) ©.http://www.un.org/sg/biography.shtml

Cool. I could use 1.5 M. This email screams "hit delete." Yet it's a real goldmine for fact checking and believability:

• Ban Ki-moon - yes, he is Secretary-General of the United Nations (but why is he writing to me?)
• info@diaockhanglinh.com.vn - (a Vietnamese real estate website?);
• ONLINE NOTICE!!!! (not the message you'd expect if you actually won the money);
• $10,500,000 USD - too much to be believable?
• "you and other 7" - Mr. Ban Ki-moon needs some help with English (or maybe he types as well as Illinois' former governor);
• $1,500,000 - a nice sum and it is one-seventh of 10.5 M, but remember, there are supposedly 8 winners (seven others plus me) so this doesn't add up;
• Please send your Name, Address & Phone Number, email ID - (stranger danger!)
• union payment768@sify.com - check it out: sify.com has no believable connection to a payment (payout) center;
• +60166561422 - what are the chances this is a real phone number? International code 6-Argentina? 60-Germany? 601-Mayotte Isl? (off the east coast of Africa); for no particular reason, I vote for Mayotte;
• ©.http://www.un.org/sg/biography.shtml - not sure about the copyright symbol, but this is Ban Ki-moon's biographical page. Nice try.

So many inaccuracies; so many things don't add up. It makes for good fact checking practice.

I've left two juicy fact checking "facts" untouched. Can you find them?