Make finding open content easier
when it's available incorporate simple license info into default search results [eg Creative Commons symbols]
Search Engines : Browse Popular Ideas
How should search engines be integrated with Learning Registry? What can LR do to help search engines give better results? What can SE companies do to help us with this project?
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This idea is active.Search Engines »7 comments for Idea: Make finding open content easier
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This idea is active.Search Engines »
Accessibiity and Personalisation of Resources
3 comments for Idea: Accessibiity and Personalisation of ResourcesAddress the accessibility and usability of resources to individuals by supporting searching on simple Accessibility Metadata for resources such as IMS AccessForAll 3.0, the release of which is imminent.
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Search Engines to add "Learning" as search context (just you can with images, videos, etc)
6 comments for Idea: Search Engines to add "Learning" as search context (just you can with images, videos, etc)Search Engines could add "Learning" to their standard home page options of Web, Images, Videos, Maps, News, Shopping and E-mail.
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intelligent metadata extraction and tagging
A web search engine crawler could use the same algorithms found in some commercial metadata generation products to intelligently extract metadata (interpolating such things as seat time for the learning object, intended audience, etc.). This metadata would then be available to search against and display in results through the "advanced search" function. And it could be submitted to a Learning Registry sandbox as a proposed ...more »
1 comment for Idea: intelligent metadata extraction and taggingA web search engine crawler could use the same algorithms found in some commercial metadata generation products to intelligently extract metadata (interpolating such things as seat time for the learning object, intended audience, etc.). This metadata would then be available to search against and display in results through the "advanced search" function. And it could be submitted to a Learning Registry sandbox as a proposed new object for cataloguing.
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Microformats
2 comments for Idea: MicroformatsAdd a microformat to a piece of educational content so a search engine's bot or crawler knows its educational.
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Authoritative, Generative, and Social Search
Something I have personally been thinking about for some time is that there are three distinct modes for organizing and finding resources and answers. Aaron's citation of the Dewey system is that of an authoritative taxonomy. The pros of these are that they are authoritative, relatively stable, and efficient at getting you somewhat near to the resources you want. They also work well as filtering methods if you are familiar ...more »
4 comments for Idea: Authoritative, Generative, and Social SearchSomething I have personally been thinking about for some time is that there are three distinct modes for organizing and finding resources and answers.
Aaron's citation of the Dewey system is that of an authoritative taxonomy. The pros of these are that they are authoritative, relatively stable, and efficient at getting you somewhat near to the resources you want. They also work well as filtering methods if you are familiar with the taxonomies. The cons are (a) they are static and rarely keep up with the modern pace of change (b) expensive if you want professionals to do the classification and questionable in the minds of authorities if you crowd source the classifications and (c) exclusive in the sense that there is a relatively steep educational and learning barrier for their use.
The second organizational method is generative. This is what we experience with standard search engines. Behind the scenes technology is indexing, re-indexing, reclassifying etc. on a more or less continual basis, and as searches are submitted the searches themselves become data that is used to organize the corpus of resources. The pros of this are that it is flexible, fast and generally effective. The cons are that (a) it takes a lot of resources and research to get beyond simple term matching and page ranking (b) many methods fail for collections that are too small (not enough link data) or too big (too many results) and (c) it is not trivial (even today) to learn to use search engines effectively.
The third method is social. This is the modern equivalent of "if you want to know something, ask a friend" but facilitated by social media. To the extent that the results of inquiries can be captured and fed into Generative methods, there are some real possibilities here since people are better than computers at understanding context and recognizing semantic equivalents within their domain of experience. The cons are (a) answers are non-authoritative (b) managing social search at scale is a new field with a host of challenges and (c) I am not sure if we have enough experience to gauge its true effectiveness.
Having said all that, my suggestion is that a fundamental principle for any search system or knowledge management system is that all three methods should be used and that each one should be used and combined when and where appropriate. Hope that makes some sense!
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XML Site Maps
Add your comment for Idea: XML Site MapsExtend XML Site Maps so one can specify that a resource is "educational."
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Index compressed or packaged files
Add your comment for Idea: Index compressed or packaged filesGiven how much educational content is put online in Zip format (or similar): encourage search engines to support selective indexing of the contents of Zip archives, for example through an extension to the Robots Exclusion Protocol [posted on behalf of Scott Wilson - CETIS]
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Tune search engines better for learning not just discovery
Understand better the nature of learning and reflection. Search Engines have a role, a range of roles, but learning involves much more than discovering "learning content" through the use of keywords, tags, & other forms of metadata. Discovery needs to align better with query & sense-making. Support for well-formed questions would help -- "natural language search" only goes part of the way. Other scaffolding is necessary ...more »
Add your comment for Idea: Tune search engines better for learning not just discoveryUnderstand better the nature of learning and reflection. Search Engines have a role, a range of roles, but learning involves much more than discovering "learning content" through the use of keywords, tags, & other forms of metadata. Discovery needs to align better with query & sense-making. Support for well-formed questions would help -- "natural language search" only goes part of the way. Other scaffolding is necessary
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Make the Search Engine the Registry
I've tried to reflect on "how a search engine would be integrated with the Learning Registry?" - but since I don't know what the "Learning Registry" is yet, it's a difficult question to ponder. My first reaction is that registries don't "learn" - people "learn". So, perhaps it should be called an "educational content" registry so that it's clear that this is a place to find educational content (if in fact that is what ...more »
1 comment for Idea: Make the Search Engine the RegistryI've tried to reflect on "how a search engine would be integrated with the Learning Registry?" - but since I don't know what the "Learning Registry" is yet, it's a difficult question to ponder. My first reaction is that registries don't "learn" - people "learn". So, perhaps it should be called an "educational content" registry so that it's clear that this is a place to find educational content (if in fact that is what it is). Then my second comment would be that, well, registries don't appear to be very popular on the web (question to ask ourselves - why do we keep shooting ourselves in the foot by trying to do things in the educational community that the rest of the world dislikes? need a shrink to answer that one). But seriously, I don't personally use "registries" for anything. So, this leads me to think that search engines should be able to find the educational content where ever it may be - even if it is not in the registry. That is, the search engine builds the registry. So, instead of Google Ad Words, we set up a ranking algorithm for educational content and build an open source search engine to implement it. We publish the ranking algorithm as an open "standard" (ouch - sorry to have to use that word). And, we then invite the various educational content providers to expose the right metadata and other stuff to our bot and others that may get built. We ask Google to license their code to us for free because it is for educational purposes and because they are not evil. Ha ha. Just teaching you guys how to brainstorm!
I actually do believe the part about having to find the content where it is and build the registry - while at the same time enabling others to do similar things.
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Faceted Search
1 comment for Idea: Faceted SearchKids and Teachers alike are still familiar with sections in their school library classified by the Dewey Decimal system. Librarians and Technology Coordinators in K-12 use it daily. If search engines supported search by explicit classifications (Dewey, Library of Congress, others), it could make use of existing taxonomies.
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Create Better Search Forms
There are several reasons that educators and/or learners cannot find the content the learning content they would like find on the web. Some of those reasons mean that even this suggestion will not solve the problem but it may provide some interim steps to improve discovery until some of the underlying causes are remedied. For the purpose of this suggestion I will temporarily ignore the issues of content that is not ...more »
2 comments for Idea: Create Better Search FormsThere are several reasons that educators and/or learners cannot find the content the learning content they would like find on the web. Some of those reasons mean that even this suggestion will not solve the problem but it may provide some interim steps to improve discovery until some of the underlying causes are remedied.
For the purpose of this suggestion I will temporarily ignore the issues of content that is not exposed to direct indexing and searching (aka dark web) and the lack of suitable metadata, and instead, just suggest an approach and play out some likely scenarios.
We can't find the content we need because we cannot construct the right queries to find it. Most people are not particularly adept at creating syntactically robust queries that use operators to refine the query, and therefore, return better results. Providing a search form for query creation that is better suited to learning content could help many people to find the content for which they are searching. Simple keyword queries are a pretty inaccurate "shotgun" approach to finding content. Even when results are returned, there is seldom sufficient information in the sample text that is returned and the searcher must visit the actual resources found to get some idea of their usefulness. Typing in questions provides greater accuracy because there are more words to associate, but even so, the results are not ideal.
If searchers could fill in a form that contained relevant options to educational searches then more accurate results would be returned. Aside from just the subject area or course name itself, selections for the level of education (primary, secondary, vocational, corporate training, etc), along with a reference to the year level or prerequisite knowledge, free/commercial/any, perhaps selections such as level of modularity (complete course vs module of a course) and perhaps even a preferred institution/initiative/vendor, any accessibility requirements, license restrictions etc etc. Then when the results are returned, provide a way to filter on the properties that were included in the search. Even if the search did not include all the fields, the results list could still be categorised along the lines of the fields suggested. These two simple steps could quite easily be implemented by search engines with some quite reasonable benefits.
Including these sorts of criteria would no doubt influence indexing in the future. Over time, accuracy would improve, however, until the metadata required to provide reliable results is available we would still have to rely on indexing and algorithms to interpret the nature of the content (not true semantic analysis just what is currently done).
A better implementation would include changes in the form based on some of the values that get filled in or even via user preferences. There is a lot more that could be said but this gives the gist of the suggestion and how it would help.
It has already been mentioned that custom search engines already exist but that these fragment the act of searching. Potentially this suggestion could have the same effect. Performing a metasearch (ie a search engine that is actually an aggregator of results from the real search engines), however, could assist in alleviating this problem. Other similar approaches would include the work done by OKI with their repository OSID. Something like their approach could provide the interoperability at either search engine or repository level that could also provide value. Users can also select search targets from those available to them or they could add new ones.
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context based content delivery
Add your comment for Idea: context based content deliveryProvide context based learning content delivery, i.e. according to the potential difficulties of the pages or activities performed by users
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CORDRA-style tagging
Thinking about this off and on for awhile...CORDRA was an idea to metatag learning content into a global repository. Build on that concept by allowing owners and developers to maintain rights while search engines can find their content via various tags related to content, category, resource, etc. Additional tags can be for cost, seat time, or similar companion courseware. When searching, you immediately know the content ...more »
Add your comment for Idea: CORDRA-style taggingThinking about this off and on for awhile...CORDRA was an idea to metatag learning content into a global repository. Build on that concept by allowing owners and developers to maintain rights while search engines can find their content via various tags related to content, category, resource, etc.
Additional tags can be for cost, seat time, or similar companion courseware. When searching, you immediately know the content title, owner, category, content, cost, and other related details. This would allow a direct link to the provider or developer via their server and in a matter of a few clicks push it out to learners on any system.
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InstaGrok - search engine for educational materials
We are currently developing a Web search engine specifically designed for finding high-quality educational materials on any topic, including web pages, online forums, videos and experts. You can see the demo video of it on our website: http://www.instagrok.com We are releasing a public beta version in the next few weeks. We would really appreciate any feedback and/or possibilities for partnerships. Sincerely, Kirill ...more »
1 comment for Idea: InstaGrok - search engine for educational materialsWe are currently developing a Web search engine specifically designed for finding high-quality educational materials on any topic, including web pages, online forums, videos and experts.
You can see the demo video of it on our website:
We are releasing a public beta version in the next few weeks. We would really appreciate any feedback and/or possibilities for partnerships.
Sincerely,
Kirill Kireyev, PhD
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Social Web