To what extent does information literacy instruction go
beyond library-specific resources, emphasizing awareness and understanding of
common research tools such as Google and Wikipedia? Should we?
What are we already doing related to the question?
If we wanted to consider starting this initiative or expanding what we are already doing, what do we want to learn about it from our future speakers? What questions do we want to ask during our upcoming speaker series?
In my opinion..Definitely! I believe that students should learn how to use all the resources available to them to identify reliable sources for academic research. Even simply knowing that there is a difference between Google, Google Books, and Google Gov searches is a start toward more refined searching and faster more accurate results.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tabitha. Understanding the differences in search engines and knowing how things like keyword selection can improve or muddy results is important. I believe, however, that there may be a belief by some of our faculty on campus to shy away from Google and discount its use as a saearch engine for academic/peer reviewed material, preferring instead that students stick to the academic indexes and databases that relate to their subject area.
ReplyDeleteTo me this is unfortunate, because Google is so much more than a simple web search engine. An entire semester length class could be conducted which simply introduced and demonstrated the array of tools that Google offers. Much of the information they provide to successfully utilize their search engine can be applied to any other search engine as well. Also included is information on how to select keywords as well as how to utilize filters and search operators. Additionally, Google has become synonymous with the online search. It has also expanded to create multimedia devices, web browsers, and operating systems. A mastery of Google may very well be as necessary in the future of communication and information retrieval as knowing how to read and write.
http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/
ReplyDelete