I was sitting at dinner with my family the other evening (yes, I do the "family dinner" thing...) and my tech savvy 10 year old son asked me a science based question.
Now, normally, I would dig into my deep well of personal knowledge - I am a science teacher after all - and discuss the answer with him while trying to engage his HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills). That night though, I told him to "Google it" himself. This brought up some interesting discussion...
It seems that my son, a representative of the "Google Generation" (see my blog on Kano Boy) was only aware of the most superficial ways of using the Google search engine. This led me to wonder if other students were as "search challenged" as my son.
To explore further, I asked random students, at the high school where I have my office, how they would google a specific question. The results were the alarming!! They had absolutely no depth to their search - just a superficial check of the first couple of websites. What was even worse was that they didn't even check to see how reliable those sites were!!
(If you have never heard of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, you must read up on this endangered species at this link AND THEN.... read the real story at this link! You will quickly see what I mean about search skills!!)
My fellow 21st Century Educators, I would suggest that we need to take it upon ourselves to make sure that our students, the hope for the future, fully understand HOW to use this wonderful source of information called GOOGLE! This means that WE must become educated on the myriad offerings that Google has and become proficient users.
To help with this task, I will be posting, once a week, different Google resources that we can use to become better acquainted with this pervasive technology that surrounds us.
My first recommendation is an amazing on-line Google class that teaches how to become a "Power Searcher with Google Search!" (www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com)
This site uses the Google "Course Builder" LMS which is a free resource that we can use to build our very own on-line classes. (More on this in a later post)
So, let me know what you think! As always, your comments and suggestions are always welcome on the blogsite.
Yossie
Yossie Frankel
IT Director - Shalhevet High School
Tech Specialist - CIJE
Checkout my blog: www.technorebbe.com
Twitter @yossiefrankel
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