A Google Renaissance

There have been so many innovations announced by Google in recent weeks, that intermittent visitors to the search site are sure to be surprised. While new developments are routinely posted at the official Google Blog, with supporting videos at the Google Channel on YouTube, today's podcast is my attempt to put many of the most recent developments into context.



Is individualized search a good thing? See what Google suggests when you type the word 'Renaissance'...


And just in case you missed Google Goggles and the changes in store for mobile devices:

You Are What You Search: Part 2

You may now be the results of someone else's search!

It's been many months now that I've had the benefit of social search embedded in my Google searches. Courtesy of a Firefox plugin, I'm used to seeing this:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Now, each of us will have access to breaking news and random information that the masses are posting to Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Identi.ca, and much as Google announces the roll-out of Real Time Search.



Will the personalized aspects of Google's search, allow me to specify the mining of tweets and posts from my Collaborative Learning Network?
Will anyone step in to archive today's zeitgeist?
How long will it be until marketers learn to manage this live search mechanism?

Twitter as Searchable Thought Stream

Fresh on the heels of the first ever Educhat, I'm glad to share with you the discovery that Twitter is a Search Engine! While it doesn't necessarily search facts and content, it does search the most current thoughts and ramblings of millions of Twitterers.




If you'd like to see how magical a search of Twitter can be, try your own query at Twitter Search. There are a number of search operators you can employ, or you can augment your search by using the Advanced Twitter Search.

Thanks to M-T Hacks, I now read the pulse of the globe related to select Google searches in Firefox. I'm not sure how long Google will allow this script to work, but it's a fascinating way to see who's saying what related to the search terms you employ. In the screen capture below, you'll note that another Firefox plug-in, Feedly, allows my searches to reference RSS feeds from my Google Reader account.


At least for the time being, I'm happy that Firefox, Google, and a number of creative developers are playing nicely together. Still, I'm left wondering what might this mean for the future of search?

Common Craft Teaches Web Search

Cool!
Lee and Sachi LeFever have just posted a new Common Craft Video:


Web Search Strategies in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

For those looking for more 'how-to search' tips, and for a way that students can apply what they learn, feel free to visit the Google Incorporated, a rich performance task I wrote a few years ago to teach teachers and students how to Google for Gold.

Chrome Comes to Life

It's Here! Google Chrome and it's companion open source code page, Chromium, are now available in beta form for PC users. Highlights include: ready access to the sites you visit most often; an intuitive search/address bar called 'omnibox'; and a minimalist package worthy of Google's heritage.

Here are my first impressions, including a quick comparison to Firefox, Safari, and Flock (6 minutes).


I'm guessing that Chrome will soon be a key component of Android and the Google Phone, and while it's not earth-shaking enough to get me to run Microsoft Windows, I'll be downloading the Mac version when it's ready for prime time.

Teaching Them to Teach Themselves

By now most people are very familiar with the way that metadata tags are "Teaching the Machine". What is less commonly understood, is how tags can be leveraged to engage students in "Teaching Themselves".


Assuming that a teacher can create a unique identifier for a class or course (i.e., Lucier_physics_2008 or LucierSPH08-unit5), there are many ways to engage your students in the gathering of teaching and learning resources.

1] Invite students to post and tag Flickr images that match with concepts taught in class. Students might also add comments to existing photos.

2] Encourage students to share bookmarks on Delicious, Diigo or Furl. Link to videos, blog posts, photos, songs...

3] Promote the use of reflective journals in the form of blog entries that use the course identifier as a keyword or tag.

4] Add comments to blog posts that include your course identifier. While linking to rich thinking, you can model how learners might participate in educational dialogue within the blogosphere.

5] Demonstrate how comments can be added to YouTube or TeacherTube videos. "This video would be great for my LucierSPH08 course!"

6] Set up a Custom Search Engine to search specific sites for course-matching content. Tag the best of the best with your course/class code.

7] Add custom sections to a personalized news page. Consider simplifying the process by sending the RSS feed to Google Reader or another aggregator.

8] Demonstrate how to search blog entries for topical materials. Send custom searches to your feed aggregator for filtering.

9] Tag selected educational and current events podcasts. Many post-secondary institutions like Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Penn State, Texas A&M, Duke, Queens, MIT offer access to lectures and other content. Consider subscribing to a few of the many terrific free podcasts available on iTunes. Shameless plug: Have you heard the Teacher 2.0 Podcast?

10] The advanced step: Set up live feeds to various content sources by aggregating tagged content to a community location by using a tool like PageFlakes or iGoogle.

Before launching such a social learning project with students, be sure to demonstrate the power of resource sharing by pre-tagging numerous resources specific to your course. A live demo using your course keyword should go a ways towards whetting the appetite of your students.

Who knows, by opening this conversation about sharing, you might even learn a few search tricks from your students! The video below by Jimmy Ruska, demonstrates what some students already know about effective searches for complimentary material, be it for music or university textbook content.




Photo Credit: Maureen Flynn-Burhoe

Create a Custom Search Engine

I have the feeling that educators will find many uses for Google's 'free' Custom Search Engine tool. Here are but a few ideas:

1] Have Google index the content of PDF, RTF, or DOC files by placing these in a web folder; and create a custom search that is limited to this folder;

2] Provide students access to a search engine set to scour specific resources that you update for specific grades/subjects/projects (e.g., general Craig Nansen's K-12 resources)

3] Add a custom search engine to your blog, wiki, or podcast page.




Do you have any other ideas?

5 Visual Search Tools + 1

The Web has been text oriented for so long, that many may not realize that it can be searched visually. Google's efficiency in search is due in large part to the fact its menu is simple, and almost exclusively text-based. Can searches that rely on eye-candy compete? You be the judge.

1] Search Me: A graphical search that emulates the Apple scrolling image interface, complete with reflections. Are the results more relevant? This site makes the claim.

2] Boolify: A graphical representation of the boolean search. This could be a good tool for teaching simple search skills.

3] Viewzi: Although I'm not crazy about their expanatory video that borrows it's format from CommonCraft, this viewable search allows you to select a page style based on the content you're after.

4] Kartoo: Using this search engine is an interactive experience. Hovering on search results leads you to refine your search by highlighting relationships among results with links and keywords.

5] ManagedQ: Screenshot previews allow the visually oriented to quickly locate relevant search results from a menu of pages.

The extra visual search tool I'd like to share, is Quintura, uses interactive 'keyword clouds' to help users narrow their search. As a bonus, this search tool can be embedded on your site. Try it out by hovering on a keyword below...