Room With A View

The past few days I’ve been listening to podcasts from Alan November’s Building Learning Communities conference. Yesterday I listened to Alan’s session on web literacy and was struck by the concept of Google Bombing. It has huge implications for teaching, and learning. When Google searches it searches for the number of sites that link to a particular website. The more sites that link to a website, the higher up the list the site will appear on a Google search. In essence it’s a popularity contest. People have figured out how to manipulate Google to move their sites higher up the Google ranking and therefore, have more people visit them. This is Google Bombing. It’s possible for a site to bluff its way higher up the Google ranking without deserving to be there. As most people only look at the first page of a search, a lot of good sites will be missed. People need to be aware of how Google searches so they can take necessary precautions. For more on Google Bombing read the BBC article on how George W. Bush was google bombed or Search Engine Watch’s Google’s (and Inktomi’s) Miserable Failure.

I listened to Tim Wilson interview Jeff Utecht on The Savvy Technolgist Podcast yesterday. Tim interviewed Jeff while at NECC last week. Jeff has two blogs The Thinking Stick and Utecht Tips. I was interested to listen to the podcast as Jeff has just finished his first year of teaching at an international school in Shanghai. I was interested to hear how it compares to Beijing.

I could relate to much of what he said especially that he really didn’t have answers to Tim’s questions about technology and schools in China. though he wants to find out more in the future. I feel the same way. The first year in a new school is always busy. Add to that all that goes into moving to a new country, setting up a home, and figuring out how things work, it gets super busy. Though I’d like to find out more about schools in China and the use of technology in education it will be hard to do. The combination of the way the government tries to control information and the mainstream media’s way of putting a positive spin on everything makes it very challenging to find out what’s really happening.

Also, Jeff commented that the broadband was cheap. As an expat, I consider it cheap too but I wonder how cheap it is for the “average” citizen. Also, I wonder how available it is for people in more rural areas.

I’m sitting on the plane on my way home after NECC 2006. It was my first time at NECC. After several years of hearing about NECC, and reading all the blog posts I could last year, it was great to actually attend. Here are a few highlights from my time at NECC 2006.

Alan November
I attended Alan’s presentation Teaching Zack to Think. His presentation style and sense of humour were great. His message of the importance of individuals knowing how to check who’s responsible for the information they read on the web is very important. It’s something most teachers have been neglecting but it’s extremely important. His practical demonstration of the syntax to use with search engines was great. He suggested keeping up with search engine news by following Danny Goodman’s writings at www.searchenginewatch.com

Nicholas Negroponte
Several people have already blogged on his $100 laptop presentation. I don’t have anything to add except that it was a highlight of my experience at NECC.

More information can be found at the One Laptop Per Child Wiki.

Leslie Fisher
I caught two of Leslie’s sessions The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Taking Good Digital Pictures and Editing Them Effectively and Gadgets You Must Have. Her gadgets session was just fun–at least for geeks. It didn’t necessarily have a lot to do with education but for a Friday afternoon session it was great. Leslie’s a great presenter. If she wasn’t a geek she could be doing stand up. Her photography session was very practical. What I appreciated most is that she focussed on taking good pictures. I find that people often focus on things one can do in photo editing software and neglect the fact that one has to start with a well composed photo. It doesn’t matter how much time a person spends editing a poorly composed photo, it’s still going to be a bad photo.