Monthly Archives: January 2011

Jan 17 2011

Search for Everyone

The Internet is built for everyone.  There’s content that appeals to users no matter what the search.  Just fire up Google and search for any term or a person and you’ll find results that either meet your requirements or are far off base.  That’s the joy and frustration of using a search engine and the reason why teaching how to search, hopefully as early as possible, is so crucial.

Even when you find resources that are related to the desired search, they can pose an extra problem.  Sometimes you’ll find something that’s just right but at other times, you’ll find something too simplistic.  Yet other times, you may end up right in the middle of a technical manual.  If you are having difficulty finding something with the right reading level, imagine the frustration that a young searcher has.

Twurdy is a search engine that tries to help out in these cases.  It’s based on the content of Google so you won’t miss anything there.

In fact, it looks just like a simple Google search.  Enter your search term and let it do its thing.

Now, searching does take a little longer as the results are fetched from Google but then Twurdy does something helpful. It analyzes the results and gives you an idea as to the reading level of them.  By colour coding what it displays, you get an assist as to the reading level and what’s appropriate.

The darker the colour, the higher the reading level.  You can even turn on Twurdy’s determination as to what age level each of the  results is.  That sounds like a challenge to me so I sent Twurdy to my blog.  At what reading level are my entries?    I found the results interesting.  Some of the darker entries I did spend more time writing, had a little research and many links in them, and tended to be longer.

I don’t know what their algorithm is for determination but it’s an interesting concept.  I’ve been in junior classes where hands shoot up asking for help when students end up on pages that are too difficult to read.  Using a tool like this and searching for the right colour sounds like an interesting way to help these searchers find something that they can actually read when they get there.

According to the documentation, the name “Twurdy” comes from a meld of the words “too wordy”.  It’s actually good advice for some bloggers to follow!  The search engine is not a filter so don’t rely on it for that sort of thing.  But, if you’re looking to find a way to get age appropriate results, this might just fit the bill.

 

Jan 17 2011

links for 2011-01-16

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
Jan 16 2011

Football Exploring

I’m really starting to dislike Hyundai.  It’s not their vehicles; they’re probably as good as the commercials would have us believe  but during the football games yesterday, the commercials played over and over and over.  Couldn’t CTV sell air time to someone else?

To kill the time during the commercials, I took upon myself to do one of my Formula 1 activities and apply it to football.  The goal was to fire up Google Earth and head to the city on television and see if I could find the stadium from the air after turning off the Places setting.  Some fields are easier to find than others.  For example, the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis has its name on the top so that you can see it from space!  What I find really interesting is the architectural design that goes into modern stadiums and what you can see from space.

So, yesterday, I located Heinz Field

and the Georgia Dome.

without too much difficulty.  By itself, the two of them show interesting design elements.  Even more interesting is to see how the artists of the world have added 3D Building effects to locations as well.  (Go back to Indianapolis!)

The activity of exploring sites has huge potential in the classroom when discussion current and historical events.  What better way to take a virtual tour of your community to cover curriculum expectations?  If you have a particularly interesting or snaking road in your community, follow it.  If you have a local landmark, find it.

For bonus marks, for each of the stadiums, can you use StreetView to find the entrance like here to get into Quest field?

Commercial’s over!  Back to the ball game.

Jan 16 2011

links for 2011-01-15

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
Jan 15 2011

Looking for Intelligent Answers

I was actually just going to call this post “Looking for Answers”, but it didn’t really frame the message that I wanted to convey.  Lately, I have messed around with a service called Quora. By its own definition Quora “is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.  The premise is pretty good – “you ask a question and people answer them.”

How does it differ from Twitter?  Probably the best explanation is that it isn’t limited by 140 characters.  Twitter is awesome as a learning place but is hampered by the size limit.  Often the best answers from Twitter come from multi-part messages or a link to a web resource where details may be found.

How does it differ from Yahoo! Answers then?  From a quick look, the functionality does seem fairly similar.  I don’t see dropping one or the other at this point.  I do find that Quora, at this point, tends to give more serious answers.  Above the simple Q&A, Quora allows you to follow people to determine what their conversation is about.  I liken the logic to a good confidant.  If you get a good answer, you’re more likely to return.

I actually discovered Quora when I was in search of an answer that I couldn’t readily find by other means.  I was intrigued and so signed up and drop in periodically to see what’s being discussed.  More importantly, I’ve tossed out a couple of questions myself that required opinion and research and was quite impressed with the results that it generated.  Here’s an example of one.

Why does Twitter enjoy such success in comparison to FriendFeed, Plurk, Buzz or any of the others?

Answer Summary

Some of the things that helped twitter score over its competitors were simplicity, suitability to mobile platforms, excellent noise control concept, early adoption and stickiness of celebrities and its excellent APIs that encouraged a whole world of apps.

12 Answers

Robert Scoble, Rackspace Web hosting’s tech enthusia…

37 votes by Murtaza Ali Akbar, Peter du Toit, Paul Ricard, (more)

I was an early user of all these tools and studied this problem from the front-row seat I occupy.

1. All users are not the same. Kevin Rose is worth more to a startup than Joe Smith. The Kevin Rose’s of this world never took to any of the other services named here than Twitter. Why? We’ll discuss this next.

….  the 12 answers continue on at this link if you’re interested.

There are some interesting twists that you’ll find here.  First, as you pose a question, Quora tries to help out by seeing if someone has already posed the same or similar question.  That is helpful to expedite the process.  Answers can come from anywhere and the best of the answers can be voted up to make sure that you’re getting the better ones at the top of your reading.  One of the more interesting features is that others can edit your question to make it even better.  I found that interesting.  The concept of crowd sourcing answers is intriguing to me somehow and the seriousness of the answers that I’m getting at this point do make it worthwhile.  The answer summary is a nice feature as the best of the content is easily made available.

I have asked a few questions so far.

  • Why does Twitter enjoy such success in comparison to FriendFeed, Plurk, Buzz or any of the others?
  • Who do you see as an upcoming speaker blending the best of education and educational technology in their presentations?
  • Are there any amateur infographics creators out there? What tools are you using to create your product?
  • I’m seeing a number of blog posts today where something called “The Blog Health-O-Meter” evaluates a blog and gives details. It makes reference to WordPress.com statistics as the source for the data. Does anyone know where this is coming from?
  • How do Web 2.0 companies make money?

The results have been interesting.  Many don’t generate definitive answers but have led me to open my thinking in different directions and that’s always good.  If you’re looking for answers that can’t be found using traditional tools, you might just find this resource as a place for better answers.  No one source will be the sole place to turn but the more you add to your toolkit, the better the toolkit becomes.  Follow Quora on Twitter as new questions are piped over and someone may have just asked a question that you’ve always been curious about but never thought or knew where to ask it.

Jan 15 2011

links for 2011-01-14

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
0
Jan 14 2011

Forest and Trees – Ontario Educator Style

A couple of weeks ago, I released my LiveBinders effort which was a way of sharing all the Ontario Educators who also had active blogs in one form or another.  The LiveBinder format allows for the easy display of any kind of links in your browser and, through tabs, an easy way for me to categorize the blogs by content.  I was pleased with the results and I think it was unique way to showcase the results of some of the excellent works from folks throughout the province as they share their ideas with their colleagues, the rest of the province, and indeed, anyone in the world who happens to drop by their blog.

So, in one spot, you could navigate to any Ontario educator blog, read it, and then rather than wandering around, link by link, to see what else was new, catch it all in one spot.  They just appear in the LiveBinder window and the navigation remains at the top of the screen so that you can quickly reach out and see what someone else has to say.  So, if I wanted to see @jaccalder’s latest, it’s just a matter of clicking on her “Ramblings” title and voila.

Whenever you try to do something like this and be inclusive, you realize very quickly that you’re not inclusive by any stretch of the imagination.  Within minutes of posting the blog entry, I received a message from another Ontario Educator asking why their blog wasn’t included and could I add theirs?  The answer is twofold – first of all, I don’t know every blog in the province and secondly, absolutely.

I then came to the realization that this probably wouldn’t be the only person.  A little noodle scratching later and I thought – you know, the content in a LiveBinder is just webpages.  Why don’t I write one to collect information from anyone who wanted to contribute and put it into a table so that I could use the web to collect this data rather than waiting for anyone new to come along and have to engage in a dialogue to get the necessary information.  I could write an active server page with an Access database like I did years ago when I wrote the Webquest Locator to collect and display webquests according to subject level.  So, I got about the task of writing something. I’m always challenged by appearance and design but maybe I could at least do something functional.

Then, for whatever reason, I paused and thought – man – you are so old school.  Sure, given enough time and FTP services, you could make this functional BUT the whole premise behind LiveBinders is that it displays webpages in the window.  All that I’m looking to do is collect four fields of information.  There’s a far easier method.  Haven’t you been the one that encourages people to use the excellent resources available on the web?  Literally, in seconds, I had a Google Form created – and it looked good too.  There was, in fact a template that had almost Twitter-like colours and even included some birds in its design.

I could spend hours on design and not get anything that looked that good!  With the appropriate tool, it was done in seconds.  Since, with each tab in the LiveBinder, you have to land somewhere, I elected to land on this collection form.  It looks great and it is absolutely functional.  The results go into a Google Spreadsheet serving as a modern-day table for this simple project and I just make the document notify me whenever someone happens to make an entry.  Then, I check to make sure that it’s legit – spammers are always looking for new ways to spread their poisonous word – and it becomes part of the collection.

It worked well.  From the original layout, to date, about a dozen new blogs that I didn’t know existed have been added to the collection.  Since it’s up there and live, I’m hoping that it will grow so that we can showcase the efforts of as many Ontario educators as possible.  If you know of one that’s not there, please have the author swing by and fill out the form.  I’d love to have them included.

Back to the original concept though, there was an important takeaway for me.  Even with all the skills that I might have in my arsenal, I need to make sure that I look at a problem from all angles.  With so many great tools at my disposal, brute force should only be a last resort!  Think it through, Doug.  Hence the title of this entry.

Jan 14 2011

links for 2011-01-13

By dougpete • Posted in Uncategorized
1
Jan 13 2011

Starting Life in a Browser

Earlier, I had asked the question “Could I Live in a Browser‘?  I never thought that it was possible but as I continue to poke around in the Google Chrome browser, I’m finding so many ways that I can.  By hitting the Google Chrome Store, web applications or links to the web resources just add the types of functionality that I need.

But, you have to start somewhere.  If you’re using the Chrome browser, you know that when you open a new tab, Chrome is good enough to remember your most recent/popular pages.  That’s a nice feature but could we get a little more?  With this extension, the answer is a definite yes.

Head over to the Google Chrome store and install the Incredible StartPage from Visibo.

This extension effectively overwrites the default option of displaying just pages.

In the upper left, you have a little notepad for quick notes.  I use mine as a quick t0-do list.  This link is synchronizable with your Gmail Account or to your Calendar.

The column with the recycle icon gives you access to your recently closed tabs.  If I ever get into the habit of closing tabs, that might be really handy!  I’m admittedly bad at just adding tab after tab until it’s tough to find things after a while.  (Although I use the Vertical Tabs extension to help out with that.

Quick and easy access to bookmarks in the grey window is very handy if you have more bookmarks than can be displayed on the screen.

Finally, in the big area, easy access to all the applications that you have installed into the browser is just a click away.  The application draws a background image from Flickr to spice things up for you.  If you’re experimenting with the concept of just living in the cloud for your classroom, you would customize these buttons for easy student access to your set of applications.

Of course, all of this is customizable in look so that no two start pages look the same.  The name of the application is Incredible and it is pretty impressive to see what can be done to replace the defaults.  If you’re living in your browser or running the Chrome OS, you’ll find this very handy.

I’ve got to believe that this is a foreshadowing of a future feature for Chrome.