Google Search

Last week I began working with the 4th graders on search engines and searching skills, using various lessons from the Google in Education Classroom Tools and Google Search Education websites.  Last year I found the "Start Your Engines" presentation, which introduces terms that I want my students to know and having in common, such as "browser," "search engine" and "query," as well as the video with Matt Cutts which explains briefly how Google indexes webpages and ranks search results.

After that introduction, I taught a short piece of the Beginner lesson on the Search Education website about "Picking the right search terms."  It is difficult to fit in a whole lesson in about 30 minutes, while still allowing for book checkout at the end of library, but we do what we can in each class.  I have the laptop carts reserved, so each student has a MacBook at their fingertips to do hands-on searching and gain experience.

This week I had students work in small groups while we discussed choosing keywords and how to turn a question into a query.  Too often I see students typing entire questions into a search engine, and then getting results which are difficult to weed through to find one that answers the question.  We simplified some questions, then I gave them a few to work through in their groups.  They worked together to do searches, trying different combinations of words, then reporting back about the search.  They focus so much on finding the answer, and sometimes finding the wrong answer, that we need to take a step back to look at the keywords we are using and adjusting until we get a good collection of results before we look for the specific answer to the question.

We will do more practice with selecting good search terms this week.  I was planning to use past questions from the Google a Day website, which gives a search question of the day, but found that it has changed format recently, which makes it less useful for me.  I have specific days bookmarked as good search questions for elementary students, not too complex, not requiring certain background knowledge or alternate query terms, but I can't seem to get to specific days in the Google a Day website any more.  I will spend time trying to do this over the weekend, but it's disappointing.  I found being able to go back to previous days' questions an invaluable teaching tool.  Now it appears to be more of a game and less about a teaching tool.  I'll report back next week after I have had time to play with it.

Kindle Paperwhite

I read a review of the new Kindle Paperwhite, thinking I might consider it for my ereader grant, but the review points out two potential problems for our school situation:

1. The Paperwhite doesn't have an audio out port, and we like to have some struggling readers listen along while they read the text.
2. It doesn't come with a separate adapter, so I would need to purchase one for each device we order.  It is too cumbersome to try to recharge every device on a computer.  I do this currently with the iPad2 I have in the library.

I saw an iPad2 in action last week at a staff development day, as each of our high school students has one, as well as teachers who have gone through training.  The question we were discussing as we were looking at it was: Is the iPad too much for what we want it for?  We need to look at the cost vs. what the purpose of the device really is.

The high school students and librarians find it useful because they can access databases and other research sources through the iPad, but our elementary students would only be using it for reading for now.  We would download apps such as Google Play and the Kindle app for our ereader software.  We also looked at Mackin and Follett as possible sources of ebooks and will continue to research those options.  With the iPads we could expand our use of the device beyond reading ebooks to having apps for math or other subject areas.  Would we really do that, and how would we manage that with 518 students and just a few devices?

One more may enter the mix if the iPad Mini is introduced this week as some have speculated.  I'd like to see the specs and actually hold one to see what I think, along with thousands of other people, I'd guess!

Lots of questions, more research to come, and then a decision needs to be made by the beginning of November, when the grant applications are due.