This week we are learning about the structure of the internet, how to effectively navigate it using web browsers and a little about online word processing. There is a lot of content here so lets dive in:
1. The structure of the Internet -
This is pretty interesting as I always assumed the internet was something that was just growing in terms of number of web pages and not really in complexity. The team behind the Google Chrome web browser put out the following booklet about the structure of the internet and if you can stand a little bit of the pandering to try to get you to use their web browser it is a really good read. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.20thingsilearned.com/home I really liked the part about how Google and other companies are trying to stream line the web so that less code can do more. 3D, video, pictures, sounds and other multimedia used to require a lot of plug ins in order to properly work. It seems that now HTML has evolved to take on these challenges. It will be interesting to see what is in store for the web in HTML6 and beyond.
2. Searching the Internet -
This week we are to look at several different web search engines and evaluate them against our current preferred web browser. I, like many others, have been a Google guy for many years and it will be fun to use a few different browsers to see how things stack up. I am especially excited about the possibility to produce my own narrowed search engine using http://www.google.com/cse/. I just had a quick assignment for my students to find out how much energy usage they typically had in a day and they produced wildly different numbers due to not having a narrow enough search. Hopefully I can put together a decent search engine for them to use through out the remainder of their Alternative Energy unit.
3. Online Word Processing -
The last thing we are looking at this week are online word processors. I appreciate that the cloud is a wonderful way to share information, but there are some downsides that I am a little worried that we have not discussed: the lack of ownership of one's own creation, the lack of powerful formatting and editing tools that a full software package offers and the tying of your work completely to an internet connection. That being said online word processing has numerous applications in the classroom that I can see. Last week we looked at the wonderful website typewith.me and the use of the document creation software for collaborative work in a synchronous fashion. I could see implementing google docs or writewith.com as an asynchronous option. Having students email files back and forth tends to get really messy when working on projects. A word processor that is in the cloud can really help students organize collaborative work.
Hi John - I was wondering if you had looked into creating your own search engine yet. That would help your students in narrowing down their searches because you would put the pages that you want them to have access to in your custom search engine. I know what it is like to have students come up with an overwhelming amount of information and wasting too much time trying to sift through all of it. I am currently trying to get a custom search engine up to help students with research questions, but I haven't found the exact answer to my problem yet. I wish you success with your alternative energy unit!
ReplyDelete