Google Jockey
24 05 2006I came across the concept of a ‘Google Jockey‘ a couple of days ago, and I am still pondering how/if we could use this idea in a school environment.
“A Google jockey is a participant in a presentation or class session who surfs the Internet for terms, ideas, or Web sites mentioned by the presenter or related to the topic at hand. A screen displays the jockey’s searches for all participants to see.“
It would be interesting to see what keywords the students would search for while the teacher, or other students were talking. Even though it is a google jockey there is no reason why this wouldn’t work with any search engine.
Would students have sufficient subject knowledge to be able to pick out the keywords? Would it be a distraction to other students? Students could send requests either via IM or SMS.
At the end of the lesson you could grab a copy of the browser history and upload it to a blog or wiki for the rest of the class to browse later. This could be carried out in conjunction with another student taking notes directly into a wiki, which the whole class could edit later to produce a collaborative set of notes. How powerful these learning resources would be for revision etc at a later date.
Further details can be found here.
What do you think, is this something we should think about pursuing in schools - apart from the cost of a second projector. The jockey could always just search and record the results within a wiki to provide further references for the students to read after the lesson.
That’s brilliant! I like that. As a variation though, I think I’d have them save the sites visited to del.icio.us (or similar tool) rather than relying the browser history. That way, the links could be tagged according to the topic being covered. How useful would that be come revision time? I have a Guide to del.icio.us that is published under a Creative Commons Licence so an enterprising individual could adapt it to make a Google Jockey specific version.
The wiki idea might be good too as it would allow all the students to go in and edit or comment on the links the Google jockey found. Could the jockey edit straight into the wiki live rather than having to do it afterwards? I suppose it might slow them down compared to the much more straightforward find-and-bookmark option.
Would you need two projectors? It may be enough to leave some time at the end of the lesson/presentation to display and discuss what the jockey found or is the simultaneous display of what the jockey finds with what the teacher is saying the main point?
My only concern is that the jockey might miss too much of what the teacher is saying because they are concentrating to much on the searching and storing task. However, when a teacher reviews the list of sites the jockey produced they will get some idea of any gaps where the jockey may have missed something and could take appropriate action to help the student.
I like this a lot!
Mmmm… not sure about this one. I think you would have to be very selective about the class and the subject matter. My first thought is that it would be too distracting for the rest of the class - personally, I think I would find it distracting! If you could ensure that key word searches produced succinct, one line definitions that would enhance the presentation then maybe it could work.
I would see more sense in making a note of key words for investigation after the presentation has finished - maybe keyword comment entries on a blog or a wiki as the presentation is unfolding that could be followed up by the students or teacher after the event.
Not sure, I guess only experimentation will yield some answers, maybe I will try it with an A level class. Hope I am not being too much of a dinosaur…