Are we slaves to the Google Machine?

So, this week's lesson was all about information searching and credibility. Many of the sources focused on Google tools and search strategies. I found it amazing that many of the strategies and tools listed were not common knowledge! I thought everyone knew how to include specific information, use Google Image searches, and use Google maps to do more than look at people doing stupid things and creep on friend's houses.

In truth, I am a slave to the Google machine. If i want to know something, I Google it. When's the game this weekend? Google. What's the square root of 72,356? Google. My bisabuela just told some guy who was being rude to "Carajo! Besa mi culo, pendejo!" What does that mean? I can't even spell it. I just Google spanish terms and get the spelling close. Warning: that's not a nice phrase. That really did happen, too. I didn't know what she said, so I Googled it and learned that my innocent little grandmother is potty-mouth. I don't tend to google whole questions, like many of my students do and I am pretty efficient at finding my answers, but I don't venture away from Google. As some of the articles said, people don't trust something they are not familiar with. I never use Bing, I rarely use Ask.com, I do use Wikipedia for quick reference items. If I had more than my computer in the classroom, I may do the Google A Day Challenge to help my students become better researchers. Although, I suppose I could challenge them to do the GADC using their phones. Since they love competition, I could do it on my phone and they on theirs. That could work.

Lastly, I liked the satisfy and suffice phrase that Debbie Abilock used in her article, "True--or not." For her, Satisfice was an answer that worked and would work just fine. But, to me satisfice was an answer that satisfied and sacrificed. It worked and satisfied my need for an answer, but I was sacrificing the truth for something that would do well-enough. I think many of us and our students do this. We live in the age of right now, so we want our answers now and we don't really care whether the information is accurate or not.