Journal #1 -"Your Google Guide"

“Your Google Guide” by Doug Johnson, showed a lot of the basics of Google and some tools that can often be overlooked. To me, a lot of the article seemed somewhat basic, as I basically have grown up utilizing Google. The most interesting part of the article, to me, seemed to be the statistics by John Battelle, "80% of users never proceed past the first page of results." This kind of information seemed shocking. How can people never go past the first page? There are only 10-20 results usually on the first page. I had no idea that so many people out there did not know how to use Google correctly. I thought that for a novice using Google this article would be really important. In fact, I would say that for someone who is using Google for the first time an article like this should be essential reading. Without the knowledge portrayed in this article it would be difficult to use Google to its full extent and to utilize its power. Google is a powerful tool but only in the right hands. If you don't know how to use it correctly, Google is not nearly as powerful as it can be.

1.How can the knowledge that most people do not use Google correctly help me?
I think that by knowing that most people do not use a common search tool like Google it becomes imperative that in a classroom environment that I make sure everyone does know of the basics of Google. Whether I do this by doing a slight overview of Google in my class or if I simply assign this article as reading assignment. Either way I definitely need to try to make sure everyone has the basic Google skills.

2. Should Google as a researching tool always be taught?
Google is the most powerful search engine on the Internet and the most commonly used. I think that when teaching someone how to research on the Internet the skills to use Google correctly should probably be taught. Even if the students do not use Google and instead use other research methods online many of the skills in Google translate over. Many of the Google utilities can be found on other search engines so these skills need to be taught whether we use Google or not.