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Your Google Guide: By Doug Johnson


This article is as the title indicates: a guide on how to properly use Google as a search engine. Doug Johnson breaks down this article by first introducing some commentary on the uses and possibilities of Google. Next Johnson goes on to pose questions for the reader on how Google has been integrated into their lives and the affects that is had on it. Finally, towards the end of the article, Johnson provides some astonishing statistics on Google users. For instance,“80% of people using Google never proceed past the first page of results and have never used the advanced feature.” What an amazing statistic, I would have thought that people wouldn’t venture beyond the first page to find what their looking for.

1. My first question is that I wonder who these people are and if they had learned about Google in work or school? It really is an amazing statistic; I wish that Johnson would have gone into depth a little more on the background of the people. For instance, Google is a world wide search engine, does this stat. take into account world users or is it focused primarily on users in the United States? I believe it has to be a global statistic because in most of the world (with the exception of technological developed nations (Europe/and parts of Asia, including Japan), lags behind the U.S. in the introduction of technology into the classroom. The U.S. is fortunate to have a shift in attitude towards the introduction of technology into the classroom, however there is a lot more that can be done.

2. This leads to my second question, how I as a teacher can remedy this statistic. Eighty percent of people using Google never proceeding beyond the first page is unacceptable; whether this statistic includes foreigners or not it has to be changed. I can’t change the world but I can sure change my class. First thing I’m going to do is read this article to all of my students and survey them, asking them the same questions. Secondly, I will have them take a one or two day seminar with a computer research specialist such as the school Liberian. Last but not least, I will integrate Google in my class lesson plans to familiarize students with it and make sure they understand the usefulness and benefits of doing academic research with it.