Aggregating, filtering and connecting is so old-fashioned

It was some time ago that I wrote about The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. I was impressed with Johnson’s account of Joseph Priestly, a British minister, scientist and political thinker who was also a friend and contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
And I had buried much of that stuff deep in the brain until I ran across a recent post on the Innovation Leadership Network. In Networks and the Information Glut, Tim Kastelle and John Steen write about the idea that social networks have always been around and how researchers have used those networks to gather and share information.

When we talk about ’social networks’ we don’t just mean facebook and twitter. People have always functioned within networks, and these have always been important in the development and spread of ideas.

It’s an interesting idea that I tried to articulate back in February 2009. My post was a bit all over the place and wasn’t really laser focused on the idea of social networks. Kastelle and Steen do a much better job of discussing how social networks of all kinds encourage creative thought.

The fundamentals of innovative thought haven’t changed since the 18th Century – it’s always been aggregate, filter and connect. The great thinkers of earlier times corresponded extensively because it helped them aggregate information from a wide variety of disciplines and sources.

I like their wording:

it’s always been aggregate, filter and connect

And they’re right.

Priestly used his connections with Franklin and Jefferson to gather, expand and share his research. We need to find ways to do the same as professionals and as classroom instructors.

If you are not currently part of some sort of Personal Learning Network, you need to be. It’s hard for me to imagine how a history teacher can continue to be effective if they are not connected with like professionals to ask questions, share information and discuss current research. Delicious, Plurk, Twitter, Ning, uStream, SlideShare, LinkedIn and other similar tools can (separately or together) all be pieces of that network.

It’s also hard for me to imagine trying to prepare students for the 21st century without training them to aggregate, filter and connect appropriately. And while the Priestly, Franklin and Jefferson versions of those tools still exist (US postal snail mail, for example), we also need to work to find 21st century tools that students can use.

A couple of suggestions:

• Low prep?
  Use Delicious to gather and share resources with your kids and train them to do the same.
• Higher prep?
  Use iPod Touches in the classroom as a relatively cheap way to aggregate data and connect with others.

The basic idea? Use time-tested methods of gathering and sharing information but with 21st century tools. In my earlier post, I said that

maybe all it will take is to become more old-fashioned in our thinking.

Can it be that simple?

Intersection Consulting. “5 Ways to Cultivate an Active Social Network.” 9 July 2009. 25 January 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/3704908885

Google Squared

I’ve said it before and I’m sure that I will say it again . . . I love Google. I know that the Google engineers are not creating cool tools just for me but some days, it sure feels that way.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been putting together some middle school history best practice workshops and was focused on using tools like Inspiration and other online tools to help kids manage information.

You know . . . basic data collection and organization. Putting stuff into tables and charts for first level kinds of thinking so that teachers and kids can better prepare for 3rd story kinds of cognitive activity.

Somehow I ended up over at Google Labs and began to investigate a search tool called Google Squared. Here’s what the Google geeks have to say about their creation:

Fetch and organize facts from across the web. Google Squared automatically constructs a table of facts about any category you specify.

Yeah . . . so?

Suppose you want to collect and organize data on all of the Civil War battles. In the “old” days (pre-internet), you went to World Book, found a list of battles, look them up individually, wrote down the basic info, drew a chart with pencil and enter the data into your chart. It took forever. (and often served as the actual assessment of learning!)

In the “new” old days (post-internet), you did a Google search, found your list, then cut and pasted your data into a spreadsheet or graphic organizer program. (and still . . . many times, served as the actual assessment of learning.)

Now . . . you simply go to Google Squared, enter “civil war battles” and Google Squared collects all of the data and puts it into a chart for you.

How about US Presidents? European countries? US states? American inventors? Geographic regions? Economic systems? World religions? Google Squared does it all.

You can save your squares, delete squares, edit squares, highlight squares for source info and add extra squares and/or columns. You can also start with your own blank squares and enter specific keywords into each square. Too awesome!

It’s not perfect yet but what a great way to find and organize basic information and not waste a bunch of time just gathering data. Have your kids use Google Squared, attach some great questions about that data and you’re off! Now . . . instead of the data collection serving as assessment of learning, you can actually spend time on high level stuff.

I love those Google guys!

It’s called Cooliris for a reason

Cooliris is a tool I looked at last year back when it was called PicLens and I just sort of put it out of my mind. Listening to Hall Davidson last week reminded me of it and have been messing around with it this week.

And it’s . . . well . . . pretty cool. Cooliris is basically a image search engine that organizes the results into a 3D wall of pictures. I love the interface but what I really like is the ability to view tons of pics very quickly.

Zoom in for a closer look, click out to the actual site where the image is hosted or scroll through the images in slideshow mode.

You can use the Discover feature to search quickly for a variety of web-based objects such as videos, TV shows, even online games. And all of those multimedia objects can be viewed or played within the Cooliris environment. Use it with your kids to help them organize searches and save their Favorites. Use it yourself to help find images for your instructional units. Or use just cause it’s so fun!

Tip of the Week – Clusty Search Engine

We’ve all gotten used to using Google or Yahoo for our searches. And that’s not necessarily always a bad thing. But there are other search engines out there. One I like a lot is Clusty.

What really makes Clusty unique is what happens after you search. Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters. Clusters help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items. When was the last time you went to the third or fourth page of the search results? Rather than scrolling through page after page, the clusters help you find results you may have missed or that were buried deep in the ranked list.

I like it! This can really be helpful for kids as they search and try to organize their thoughts. The clusters can be expanded into sub-clusters allowing you to drill down to very specific sites and resources. It’s also handy when your search terms are not specific enough and Clusty eliminates some results that aren‘t relevant to your search.

The screenshots to the left and right show an example search for the Battle of Gettysburg. I used just one word – “Gettysburg” – in my search box and ended up with almost 750,000 hits. This is a problem, even if Clusty displays just the first 200 hits. The beauty is that Clusty has organized the different Gettysburg search results into categories and sub-categories.

And boom, there it is! Gettysburg Civil War Reenactments. Just what I wanted.

I also like the way that Clusty gives me a way to preview sites before I link out to them. Check out this feature to experiment with how it can save time during difficult searches.

Don’t be happy with just Google, try Clusty!