Monday, December 18, 2017

Thing 9: Search Tools Ninja



Thing 9: Search Tools Ninja

I got started by going through my blog and writing down all of the “things” I’ve completed throughout the Cool Tools courses. I wanted to see what topics I’ve never explored, and also find out which ones I did the longest ago so I could focus on the updates this year.

The Search Tools Ninja stood out as something different, so I decided to explore this “thing” first. I read through the assignment description and did indeed find some articles of interest.  I decided to click on some of the suggested web search tools. DuckDuckGo and CarrotSearch both sounded intriguing but just look too basic and simplistic to be appealing. The search results seemed average, but they are not something I see myself using.

A very interesting thing happened when I tried the MillionShort web search tool. For my query I entered “fake news”. Without eliminating any sites, the first page of results featured sites like Wikipedia and FakingNews blogs. When I clicked on the box to eliminate the first 100, I was left with more authoritative looking sites, such as Snopes, NPR, and FactCheck.  The better sites seem to appear deeper in the results list for this particular search anyway. Good eye-opener as to why quality key-word searching is so important.

I took some time to read the article Search Smarter: 30+ Google Search Tricks You Might Not Already Know and Six easy ways to tell if that viral story is a hoax. Both offered great tips that I will keep in mind for both my own searching and when teaching my 6th grade Digital Literacy class.  Something new to me is Google’s “reverse image” search, which can be used to verify the original source of images. What a great tool to use when verifying online news posts and battling fake news, and great tools to expose students to! I also love the YouTube Data Viewer to see if videos are really what they claim to be. Great resources here!

Lastly, I had heard great things about LibGuides the past couple of years, and asked my District to purchase a subscription for our schools. I’ve had them since September, but have just recently started being able to understand how they work. I was excited to see this listed for this “thing” because I’ve been wanting to make the time to learn how to make better use of my LibGuides subscription. I presented about LibGuides briefly at my faculty meeting to see if any teachers would be interested in having me create one for them (I wanted the practice and this was the perfect time to dive in).  

LEARNING ACTIVITY
The Science8 teacher took me up on my offer from above, and I’ve been working on a LibGuide for her which she will be using in January.  It’s not complete yet, but you can take a look at what I’ve done so far by visiting https://millbrookcsd.libguides.com/c.php?g=762166&p=5465148 . I love how LibGuides are meant to be a curated, one-stop shop for students and their teachers. I even figured out how to give the teachers the rights to update the page (although I suspect sending me the links to add for them if they have additional content will be easier for them). Another great thing! I learned so much and plan to use a ton with my Digital Literacy classes.