Google brings Information Literacy

I deal with information retrieval all day and with services like iGoogle or MyYahoo, it is wonderful to instantaneously be piped into my research, news, blogs, email and calendar. But I like it so much I brought it into the classroom. I often have students of various majors asking how to find information on a whole variety of topics. And I used to dig through the library subscription services and then domain limit Google to retrieve academic information.

However, I work with some younger innovative professors who want the students to embrace Web 2.0 technologies and use them to aid in academic research. So I taught a class in which I showed the students how to use their iGoogle home pages as a means to catch RSS feeds on academic topics from our library subscription services, pickup blogs from reputable sources and even pull relevant news sources all into the iGoogle pages. I think this is revolutionary because it fundamentally changes academic research. It has led to conditions in which there is less information research and retrieval and more information mining and analysis.

This delves into a new field of instruction called information literacy. And iGoogle has given us a tangible information retrieval system, which we can then use in our instruction of information literacy. Hey, let’s design a Google curriculum. An ancillary benefit to automated information retrieval is that people tend to click on information they find interesting. Maybe we could also plug the data into Google Trends, and have a real-time Zeitgeist meter for trends in respective fields.

Information Economies of the Future

We live during the end of an era. The policies of unfettered capitalism combined with the mass market are no longer meeting the needs of the world. Or rather, we can no longer afford to have those needs.

(Rising energy prices for mass shipping, separation of markets, natural distrust of large corporations, more saving less spending)

However, new technological achievements, such as universal broadband enable the possibility of building an information economy in which more trade and commerce occur online. This will fundamentally change the market because as opposed to homogenizing products with mass market super-stores, the small businesses, with consumer/vendor relationships will grow instead. The is the possibility that the local business of the past, which occurred in small town shops, will be replaced by a future in a which those small shops sit online, and have international reach.

Things just might get interesting.

Batteries not Included, or Instructions

Batteries not Included, or Instructions