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media type="custom" key="431279" When a product like this takes the user all of 2 minutes to produce, we need to re-think our use of tools. Students are capable of creating media-rich, stunning visual presentations, they are capable of finding ways to entertain themselves online, but are they capable of looking critically at the web and its products?

These two quotes were taken from a study done in the UK, entitled: "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future'" conducted by British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, and they point to a new problem that we as educators face:




 * Despite growing access to online research materials, students are not evaluating their sources any more than they used to.**




 * Students are growing frustrated by the immensity of the search results and taking the first few sources as the authority.**

=As teachers, we need to look at our definition of literacy. Whether we thought so or not, it's meaning has shifted.=
 * ===With the myriad information available through simple searching, [|how can we be sure that what we get in return for our efforts is legitimate information?]===
 * ===What are the characteristics of relevant information?===
 * ===How do we manage the influx of information?===

=To begin to look at these issues, we will start you off today helping you understand how to aid your students, and yourself in searching and managing information from the web. We'll do this through:=
 * Creating searches that go directly towards what we are after--deeper searches that mine the internet
 * Creating our own search engines that limit the uwanted or paid sites that show up on a Google Search
 * Looking at search strategies and search engines that better fit learning styles and differentiated learning
 * Demonstrating how to make your research and information come to you through RSS feeds, instead of you chasing it down.
 * Annotating the web as you search so that returning to sites of interest is as easy as logging into a Google page.

Whether you subscribe to some theorist's views on Google's dominance on the internet or not, it is hard to deny the fact that Google has changed the way we use the web. For the past few years, Google has been busy creating or buying applications that are completely web-based, but function as productivity tools just like those that run from your own computer. The only difference is that you can access them from just about any computer that has internet access.

Furthermore, Google has targeted teachers as a niche market, and has created a suite of applications [|just for educators]. Let's take a quick look at their page to see what they have for us.

We will use this wiki to explore the functions of all of the applications below and how they can help us become better teachers in the classroom and more efficient users of the internet out of the classroom. To access these tools, we must first create a [|Google Account]. In the resources section there is a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Most of what we cover today will be explained and coupled with a handout or video tutorial; however below you will find videos that might help you with some other topics that we will not cover today. These are known as the [|Commoncraft series], and they explain some fairly complex concepts in a very user-friendly way.

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"information behaviour of the researcher of the future." __CIBER__ 11 January 2008 19 January 2008 <[|http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf>.] Image Credits for Animoto above: http://flickr.com/photos/supergiallo/1452121949/; http://flickr.com/photos/jrhode/375671790/; http://flickr.com/photos/learnscope/2056700636/; http://flickr.com/photos/maxine/125948665/; http://flickr.com/photos/eppstein/30572785/; http://flickr.com/photos/behshadpoor/319704891/; http://flickr.com/photos/beija-flor/313926881/; http://flickr.com/photos/babasteve/172677903/; http://flickr.com/photos/eecue/119011582/; http://flickr.com/photos/rustytanton/; http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/07/is-your-school-.html; http://russelldavies.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/17/break.jpg; Image from: http://flickr.com/photos/hamed/327939900/ http://flickr.com/photos/humanoide/; http://flickr.com/photos/drachmann/327122302/; http://flickr.com/photos/pickledshark/327374865/; http://flickr.com/photos/davidmonaghan/127144749/; http://flickr.com/photos/crimsondevotchka/69619083/; Rogers, Everett M. (1962). //Diffusion of Innovations//. The Free Press. New York.