How Google Impacts The Way Students Think How Google Impacts The Way Students Think by Terry Heick It’s always revealing to watch learners research. When trying to understand complex questions often as part of multi-step projects, they often simply “Google it.” Why do people migrate? Where does inspiration come from? How do different cultures view humanity differently? Literally Google it. And you see knowledge as searchable, even though that’s not how it works. 1. Google is powerful, the result of a complicated algorithm that attempts to index human thought that has been digitally manifest. The result? 2. When students are looking for an “answer,” good fortune sees them arrive at whatever they think they’re looking for, where they can (hopefully) evaluate the quality and relevance of the information, cite their source, and be on their merry way. But with the cold logistics of software, having come what they were looking for, learners are left with the back-button, a link on the page they’re on, or a fresh browser tab. 3.
Home Head_Project.pdf Filter Bubble Ad Placement How to Burst the "Filter Bubble" that Protects Us from Opposing Views The term “filter bubble” entered the public domain back in 2011when the internet activist Eli Pariser coined it to refer to the way recommendation engines shield people from certain aspects of the real world. Pariser used the example of two people who googled the term “BP”. One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm. This is an insidious problem. Much social research shows that people prefer to receive information that they agree with instead of information that challenges their beliefs. This is the filter bubble—being surrounded only by people you like and content that you agree with. And the danger is that it can polarise populations creating potentially harmful divisions in society. The result is that individuals are exposed to a much wider range of opinions, ideas and people than they would otherwise experience. It’s certainly a start.