Well, the first thing I would love to share with you dear coursemates in the beginning of week 2, is my infinite enthusiasm attending the lovely music festival which is held in my country, Morocco. It was really an exciting opportunity to see live performances of lots of Arab and American musicians and artists.
There is no doubt that searching the net for useful and relevant information is one of the most pressing problems students and educators have to face sometimes, not because the searching task is time consuming and tiresome – which in fact is true – but rather because they often have to sift for so long through the heaps of useless or vague information before they could find what they really need, which is regarded as a major inconvenience given the demanding hours they spend at work or the straining moments they devote to homework.
However, with Noodletools.Com, most if not all that burden is soothed particularly when you use these new engines systematically and purposefully. I have learnt that Google which has been enjoying the lion's share as a searching engine is not the only available tool. There are actually better ones with a more professionally trusted profile and academically powerful reputation like iSeek, and Intute. Maybe due to my laziness or to Google's availability I little thought of trying something else beofre this week, but this teaches me a lesson which implies that having something available doesn't mean that it's the only thing out there. Knowledge is just around, yet it doesn't come to us. We'd better look for it.
Omar,
ReplyDeleteHere in this post you raise an important issue of ‘sifting while surfing.’ Sifting through all the information available to find the grain of true knowledge. We the teachers must first of all teach our students how to evaluate the sites they are inclined to use for their reliability. First of all, is the information accurate? Is this just an opinion of a person or an organization or the given information can be proven by the library material (approved and printed)? Who is the author? Where do additional links lead you?
The Internet resources are not always reliable – they may be unstructured, unregulated, or disorganized. So, we should always check the authenticity and validity of sites and beware of misleading information. We must always keep in mind ourselves and teach our students to answer the classical 5w's and 1h questions:
Who has written this website?
What is it about? Is it factual? What do you know by reading the url?
When was the site last updated? Is it recent enough to be valid?
Where does this information come from? Where does this site link to?
Why will this information be useful? Why has the author written this?
How good is the Information?
These are the important issues that should always be paid attention to. The Internet is the ocean where you can drown if you are careless or can reach unexpected yet wonderful shores if you take great responsibility and care.
Hi Omar,
ReplyDeleteI can say that you are dealing with a problem that has concerned me and still concerns: sifting while surfing. Internet is such an infinite world with so many paths to take and it is sometimes very hard to take the right one. I have always been looking for the best way to search in order to be safe and not to lose time. When my son and daughter started surfing the internet I didn't know much about the risk, all by accident I found out that I had to be careful with all they came across. Then the same fear for my students. I know they may be considered as digital natives, but they still need to be led to the right path, we are their teachers and we know what is good or bad for them. We make efforts to update our knowledge, even if we look sometimes traditional, we are trying to do our best to change the status of digital imigrants.
By sharing ideas and suggesting to each other we can deal with a lot of problems and find best solutions for our profession. I clicked on the link above, it is helpful.
Hello, Omar!
ReplyDeleteI see that I am not alone who spends a lot of time on searching that is a very time-consuming activity. Sometimes it takes hours to find something you really need, a piece of information or a source which would correspond to your requirements. I always use Google because I am used to doing it and that was my mistake. Google appeared to be not efficient enough for some purposes e.g. for searching scientific relevant sources. Fortunately, there are search engines which are more helpful and now we are aware of them!