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April 15, 2003
In Search of ... the Perfect Search
By Pete MacKay
To search the portal or the engine? That is the question.
Teacher portals, those resource-filled repositories of lesson plans, assignments, and screened links, seemed at one time to promise the most efficient way to whittle down the thousands of results garnered in one subject-area search. But as search engines like Google and Yahoo! increase in power, offering a wide range of helpful, efficient features, educators are increasingly relying on them as their first choice over education-specific portals, such as AOL@SCHOOL, bigchalk, and MarcoPolo. At least, that was the theory I was working with when the editors at Technology & Learning magazine asked me where educators were going online to find classroom resources. It turns out there was some truth to that theory. In an informal survey I conducted of over 100 teachers from the United States, Canada, and Australia, 84 percent indicated that they are now using search engines over teacher portals.
High Marks for Google
Perhaps not surprising, 58 percent of those surveyed named Google as their first choice, citing ease of use, clarity of design, comprehensiveness, and many handy built-in features. Copernic.com and Dogpile.com were also very popular, gathering a combined 18 percent of search engine use by those surveyed.
And the Engines Have It
Evidence shows that educators prefer search engines because the results include information from a much wider variety of sources. As one surveyed teacher replied, "I would rather cull the search responses on Google than deal with what [a portal] thinks is appropriate for kids."
Teachers who prefer search engines also viewed portal advertising as a turn-off. Portals are commercial tools designed to increase Web traffic and generate revenue from that traffic. Educators seem to accept and understand this. But when it comes to school resources, the traditional bias against advertising still stands.
Surveyed teachers also noted that portals tend to save their best services for paying customers. Because educators are usually strapped by tight budgets, the user-pay model in itself is not the first option for teachers or their schools.
While the quality of teacher portal data can be very high, its quantity can be a limiting factor. Currently, a portal database simply cannot keep up with the breadth and scope of a search engine like Google. To illustrate, I visited Discovery School's Puzzlemaker, an online tool that offers close to a dozen puzzle engines that teachers can use to create materials for students. I then typed "word puzzles" into Google, which yielded 47,000 sites that feature that phrase. While narrowing this list to useable results requires time and advanced search techniques, many of my colleagues and I are more comfortable sifting through results and relying on our own judgment than letting a portal do it for us.
Web sites change frequently, leaving portals that rely heavily on external links with potentially unreliable sources. Link turnover is a widespread problem on the Web as a whole, but if educators are relying on a portal, they will most likely, regardless of how militantly a portal polices its links, find dead ends. By using some simple Boolean search techniques, however, they can be sure of accessing the most current sites when searching engines.
The Upside of Ed Portals
For teachers who want a stock of ready-to-use lessons, and a variety of tools such as e-mail, instant messaging, and puzzle engines, portals provide a quality solution. They are also an excellent choice for educators who lack the time or experience to create their own materials from search engine results. In addition, they are a good starting point for young students who need reliable, safe information. As educators become more sophisticated in their use of technology tools, they will undoubtedly feel comfortable incorporating both portals and search engines into their teaching repertoire. And as we've learned time and time again, there is no magic tool; we need an array of effective strategies and devices to do a thorough job.
Pete MacKay is a teacher and technology coordinator for Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada. He is also the author of The Teacher List.
Teacher Portal Hotlist
The following sites were among the top favorites named by survey respondents.
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