Search Engines and Tech Cafe

We know that the Internet changes every day. It became even more obvious to me this summer when I worked on an Internet course created in 2008. Five lessons are devoted to search engines and basic and advanced options to make searches effective. In reality, the Internet engineers fine-tune their products  to the users' demands very fast and Google is the prime engine that works all wonders. We don't see if other algorithms have any advantages over the one developed by the Google engineers. Some people like Yahoo but the reason is political rather than technical.  

At Web Cafe, we shared that  students use only Google. "There is no way to change their mind to try something else", was said at the gathering today. This is true that teachers'  first choice is Google too.

However, Google changes too. Last year Michaela and I were proud to demonstrate Google Wonder Wheel that helped students to be more specific on their search. Google Squared was helpful too. I thought  I was ready to show these options in a High School class last week until I learned that WOnder Wheel is any longer available and Google Squared will be seased in a couple of weeks! (Any use of  technology must be tried at least a day before the class - good that I was prepared!).  

Having an option of seeing a concept map (Wonder Wheel) was very helpful but it didn't disappeared . Google has improved its search by building the function in their search line. It directs  the user's search at the time we put our keywords in.  We can use  Bing with its list of related searches on the left side menu or DuckDuckGo that provides search ideas to clarify the search.  But do we really need to?

Google Timeline is helpful. Besides, have you seen the results of an attempt to serve users with different reading levels in Google? Have a look: on the left side menu, click "More Search Tools" and you will see Reading Level (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced).  It doesn't mean that the sites that are listed as Basic are good for Elementary but the language is not as hard as the language of the articles under Advanced are.  

   

Next Web Cafe gathering will be next Friday, September 2. Orlee will lead a discussion on Smartboards.