How to become a better searcher.
I remember using Boolean keyword searches in my undergrad and early graduate school years. It was trial and error and often I would enter terms and symbols to arrive at few or meaningless results. It was a bit frustrating, but it was the process by which I could find the information that I needed to use.
Now I have the expectation of finding whatever I want as soon as I type a word into the Google Search bar. But I don't even need to do that much as Google has worked it out so that the page will suggest the full terminology for what I am seeking before I type it. So maybe I didn't really want to search for Kayaks and really wanted to search for Kalahari....I don't know. Maybe I wanted to look at the two combined?
Nonetheless, I think that one of the better ideas that I am gaining from reading Halavais is that I need to work on helping my students reach Beyond Google. They need to realize, something I have known for years but not practiced well, that Google is one tool we can use when trying to find information on the web. It is not the only tool we can or should use.
The funny part is, I read and view multiple news sources in print, via broadcast and online and I stress to my students that a varied source of news will help fill in the gaps in reporting and will help defuse the inevitability of bias, but I don't think that I have ever helped them recognize this in their online search methods.
I will fix that.
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