And finding time to do it…
I taught a class on Internet search strategies recently. The course demands that learners know the difference between search engines, directories, and metasearch.
I find this a little irritating to teach, as the Internet has evolved a fair bit since these syllabuses were written and things seemed to have converged somewhat. At the level to which they’re working, it’s hard to find good examples of things which can’t simply be found by banging them into Google!
I deliberately kept the advanced functions of Google for last because I knew once I’d hit Google Maps and they spotted the aerial photograhy, that would be it for keeping them on task!
Then I caught myself — the learners were enthused, searching and playing with the resource and I was feeling impatient and wanting them to “get on with some work”.
Arrgghh! No! This is exactly what I WANT them have time to do.
Alright they were “only” doing (predictably), “I can see my house!”, but they were thinking about it and when they got unexpected results were reasoning it out.
I resisted the urge to rush them onto something else and wandered the room, listening out.
“Hang on there’s loads of’”John Streets’ in different places — try putting the town in as well.”
“I’ve spelt that wrong.”
“Would putting the postcode in work?”
“What does that button do?” “Don’t know – try it”
Is it directly relevant to their course? Maybe, maybe not. But they’re undoubtedly developing their learning skills.
