Learning Aloud

There is still hope the feds will put some money into K-12 technology (EETT – Enhancing Education Through Technology). The program has been brought back to life in the House by the Appropriations Committee.

See eschool news for details.

I struggle with the concept of “data driven”. Partly, this may be because of my personal interpretation of what data driven means. I was trained as a quantitative researcher and have been committed to quantative research throughout my professional career. So – the idea of conceptualizing questions and collecting data to answer these questions is something I do. With this experience may come certain biases that have to do with issues of research design, theory building, and a very cautious approach. There is a reason researchers continually say “more research is necessary” and it has more to do with skepticism and caution than making sure we have something to do next year.

So – perhaps I am confused by expectation that educators will become “data driven” decision makers based on my own uncertainties. It is difficult to find the answers to tough questions. However, maybe educators are attempting to answer “easy” questions that have important implications. I hope this is the case. When I encounter an explanation of “data driven” within the practitioner’s domain I try to pay attention. Here (from techLearning) is an example.

Time Magazine is famous for its annual “person” of the year. The company has extended this focus on the “best” of the year by offering “10 Web Sites of Year.

No, I did not find my web site on the list!

An experimental site (credited to christian langreiter, synerge digitality oeg) generates a comparison between search results located by Google and Yahoo.

The comparison appears as a series of circles associated with the first 50 (I think) results generated by each search engine. Common hits are linked by a line. You can move the cursor over a circle to identify the site.

This is cool and it must generate some useful information or promote some insight. Like what? Search engines return unique results. Try several search engines. etc.

Google has recently filed for a patent and the associated disclosure provides more detail into the ranking techniques than had previously been revealed. (Buzzle.com Summary)

I find the logic of the variables included to be very interesting. I suppose some will attempt to use what is known about the variables to engineer their site in ways that would generate a higher ranking.