Tonight, Twitter seems awash in links to websites discussing how to introduce Google Docs to your classroom. By awash, I mean that approximately half of Web 2.0 Clasroom's perpetually substantial number of links are to such articles, and Tom Barrett also tweeted a link. Many excellent ideas, including leveraging some newer (at least to me) features of certain Google products, including the form functionality of Google Spreadsheets. One of the links discussing how to integrate Google products into education actually goes to a Google Site. Moreover, the Secondary MATs have actually seen Professors use both Google Sites and a Blog as course websites this summer. The Google Site is probably ever so slightly more flexible / conventional. The attraction to such a novel use of a blog cannot be underestimated.
I wanted to focus on something a little bit different. Web 2.0 Classroom posted a link to this article,which discusses how to create a customized Google search engine. Apologies in advance: I am violating the number one rule of technology, namely writing about a tool before using / playing with / experimenting with it. Obviously, the theme (background, etc.) of the search engine can be customized. Moreover, this customized search engine can be embedded in one's website. However, most interesting, the customized search engine can be set to search only particular domains, and the search results can be customized. I assume that customizing search results probably just involves the ability to blacklist certain sites. However, I am not sure how effective such a mechanism would be, as the web is always changing. I'd be pleasantly surprised to learn that the tool is more customizable / robust than that.
I can envision a math teacher permanently embedding such a customized search engine on his / her course websites. It would be set to search the compendium of useful math tutorials, websites, blogs, and other online math resources the teacher had compiled over the years. Better yet, the math community could begin building one together. They could post it on the NCTM website, with a list of included domains in text form somewhere else on the NCTM webpage. Then, any math teacher could use this math search engine, with or without modifications (in particular, I can envision a middle school math teacher excluding college level resources, e.g.) Moreover, the community could collectively ensure the list remains up-to-date.
In this way, Google could cut down on some of the overhead of referrals. Instead of students constantly having to ask their teachers, "I am struggling with [x topic]; can you think of any useful online resources?", and the teacher having to provide the 3 resources they remember using on this topic, the students would know to go to the customized Google search and find approved resources without any explicit intervention from the teacher.
Finally, I have to geek out for a moment. Google's search engine was quite a novel concept. Instead of just looking at the number of times a search term appeared on a page, it thought in terms of the relationship (in terms of the "what links to this page" question) between and overall network of web pages. If the math community were to create a customized search engine, it may generate data on the useful connections between various topics in mathematics, which would bring us closer to being able to axiomatize the entire field (no pun intended). That would be awesome.
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