I've been on the road so long my friend
And if you came along I know you couldn't disagree
Since I went back to school in August, life seems to have zoomed by. Between an insane courseload, researching and applying to colleges, work on two major dramatic productions (including a short stint where I played projection designer), a quick trip to Italy, various hacking projects of my own, producing the three-event 30th anniversary celebration for my school with two festival-style concerts, creating a fancy slideshow sync'd to music in about 48 hours, producing a multi-day Battle of the Bands at school, and shooting for at least a few hours of sleep each night, Mozilla really hasn't been in the picture. And frankly, that has sucked. I finally had the chance to get some real work done during what was an amazing summer last year, and I feel bad that I haven't really been able to continue with the work I began as I had planned. I know I let some people down in the process, and I apologize.
Now that many of those other commitments are either over, significantly lessened (in some cases forcibly by me), or not terribly important anymore, I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. In that spirit, I spent some time tonight working on what turned out to be two critical Litmus bugs: bug 328215 and bug 328268. Neither are fixed, but it's a step in the right direction.
Going forward, I'd love to get a few things moving again with Litmus:
It's good to be back!
Update: It has come to my attention that this entry is now the top Google hit for "Newsvine invite." Seesh... If only my more interesting posts got this much attention. You no longer need an invitation to access Newsvine, just scoot on over to the registration form and sign up yourself. But really, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Not all it's cracked up to be at all. Thanks everyone! Glad to spread the invites around while they were required. Have a great day.
Dear web,
Sorry to be such a pest, but does anyone happen to have a spare Newsvine invite? I don't have anyting in particular to trade (other than new features in Litmus ;-), but I was generous giving out Gmail invites early on...
If you do, it's zach@zachlipton.com
Thanks,
--zach
Update: Thanks David Robinson, Dave Reid, plario, and Joel Pan! That should be enough for now ;-) If anyone would like an invite now, please just leave a comment and I'll send you one.
[This is kind of a long post, so even if you don't get to the bottom, I'd like to feature this fantastic page by Debbie Abilock: Choose the Best Search for your Information Needs.It's a guide to all kinds of search engines organized by type of information. Well worth a bookmark.]
It's been a while since the last installment of my Web 2.0: How Teens Use Technology series (every time I say "Web 2.0," Tim O'Reilly lets another angel into the great /home in the sky and I get the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from having my own article series), but I had a great conversation last week with my old school librarian/internet search education guru/Noodletools founder/jetsetting educational consultant Debbie Abilock that touched on the issue of search education, and it has me itching to say more.
In the technology world, people use search all the time. My Personal Search History on Google shows that I do an average of about 800 searches a month, or more than 26 a day. This doesn't include the numerous searches I do on CPAN, news sites, subscription database services like Nexis and JSTOR, my own personal clippings archive, source trees on my local disk, etc... I don't memorize information anymore, I search for it. Need to know the capital of Kazakhstan? Just search for 'capital Kazakhstan' and you'll know that it's Astana in half a second or so. Actually, I really just searched for 'capital khazchstan' -- since Google will spell check automatically, I didn't bother to figure out the spelling. I don't memorize information anymore, I just remember the search query I need to find it. Search is my second memory, my spell checker, my calculator, my friend, mentor, and advisor.
None of the above should be at all shocking to the technically inclined readers of this blog. Likely, you scoff at my lowly 800 searches a month average and wonder how you could survive with less than 1,200. But walk into a school and observe how most students use search, and you'll find search skills sorely lacking. Few know that Google and most other popular search engines allow users to search for phrases by wrapping them in quotes. Fewer still know when and how to effectively use this technique to find information quickly. Choosing effective search keywords, a skill that is vitually automatic to most of you, is an area that many teens haven't had much experience.
Yet search is one of the most valuable resources available to education. True lifelong learners view search as an essential tool; with a few simple queries, or a lot of complex ones, a learner can find out practically anything they want to know on nearly every subject. Schools that set out to create lifelong learners (and really, this should be all schools) should Search engines are powerful tools, and just like the Dewey Decimal System or the [electronic] card catalog, it is up to school libraries to teach students how to properly use them.
All this is to say that I'm excited to see that my school has decided to hire a Director of Research to teach information literacy skills. This is a great step for my school, but I think there's a broader issue here. What can search firms do to provide better search education and to make search tools easier to use? Why doesn't Google have a team putting out information literacy lesson plans for kids?
tags: web 2.0/web2.0, teens, search, google, education,library