The issue raised by Ian and Joyce makes much sense to me from an instructional design perspective. It's not what the educator thinks is good for the learner that determines what we should do, but what the learners tells us will work for them. The debate takes place among the wrong people. If it is difficult to get input on this question from the users themselves, we should at least take the trouble to place ourselves in the position of users with the greatest needs. It's my inkling that they will indeed prefer a search engine like Google, which they are most likely familiar with. Of course, we are not making a decision for eternity. Our current choice should reflect what we know now is best for our users. We can always change when circumstances change, but it is best not to experiment with alternative options in an environment that we want in the first place to be optimally user friendly.
Jan -- Jan Visser, Ph.D. President & Sr. Researcher, Learning Development Institute E-mail: [email protected] Check out: http://www.learndev.org and http://www.facebook.com/learndev Blog: http://jvisser-ldi.blogspot.com/ _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 1:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WikiEducator] Improving our our search capability -- WE need your advice I am still really on the fence. My original Google vote was for reasons much like Ian's we have thousands of users around the world who need access to wikieducator now, who are not terribly comfortable using unfamiliar software no matter how user friendly, and Google is a known commodity. I respect the open resource philosophy and am a bit leery of any commercial enterprise, even Google but I think we need to be sure that all these carefully trained folks can actually use the resources and soon....sorry to be always seeing both sides. Joyce Ian Thomson <[email protected]> Sent by: [email protected] 03/08/2010 08:43 PM ZE11Please respond [email protected] To [email protected] cc bcc Joyce McKnight/SUNY Subject [WikiEducator] Improving our our search capability -- WE need your advice >From a Developing region (the Pacific islands) struggling to include things like WE into the education system, the simpler and more familiar the better. Many teachers in the region will be familiar with Google and will feel more at home using that than some other little understood engine. I vote for Google -- Ian Thomson At SPC in New Caledonia -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
