To Google or not to Google - When is the question. (Article Review)

Last Thursday I TOCed in a grade six classroom. The teacher left me a day plan that included going to the computer lab so the students could finish researching their project on Japan. She left me no outline of the criteria, so when discussing it with the students I found they were expected to write five paragraphs on the topics of, food, fashion, holidays, school and after school activities. We went to the computer lab and I was not surprised that all the students logged onto Google to continue they research. Kuhlthau states in Riedling (2005), “Living in the information age requires people to go beyond the ability to locate information and requires competence in seeking meaning and understanding. More is not necessarily better without skilful guidance from an insightful person” (p. 9). This relates to quantity versus quantity. Yes, a Google search will give you a large number of sources, but the searcher is not guaranteed quality. It requires a good understanding of how to obtain quality information from all the information out there. Using Google to find information for the more complex stuff can be both daunting and frustrating, like finding a needle in a haystack. On the other hand, students that have not received any research training and do not have a research model to follow, may feel doing a Google search on a topic and visiting only one or two sites is adequate research. The problem with this is not only the lack of higher level thinking and learning occurring, but also the real potential to plagiarise. I have witnessed countless times, students simply Googling a topic, going to the first page listed and at best changing the words found into slightly different passages, and at worst highlighting passages, cutting, pasting and claiming it as their own. Many of the students last Thursday ended up on sites like Wikipedia, where they did just this. Like I said I was not surprised, but I was not impressed. Although I had the chat with the class about plagiarism, I felt pretty helpless in stopping the cycle. Obviously these students had not been taught the skills needed to research effectively and were falling back on what they thought was appropriate and/or easiest.

With this week’s discussion of research models in the back of my mind and this experience in the classroom, I found an article entitled “Thinking and Researching – Don’t Just “Google It’” by Steven M. Cohen (2006). Cohen explains that he is not against using Google, as he does himself, but “the problem is that the search engines that we use to answer "ready reference" questions (the easy stuff) are the same engines being used by students who are writing a term paper (the harder stuff)” (p.29) and thus students are not developing the critical thinking/research skills needed later on in life. Cohen also admits that because using “Goggle to find the simple stuff becomes so easy [he] immediately uses it for difficult stuff that it was not meant to be used for” but he fights “the urge to use Google for every research task…for the love of research…[he] is not taking the easy way out” (p. 29). I agree with Cohen that Google is not the enemy, but students have to be taught the difference of when the appropriate time is to use it. Yes they can look up easy stuff that would be found in a almanac, like What is the capital of Brazil?, but should not relay on it solely to write their five paragraph project on Japan. The trouble is they have to be shown and taught how to use alternative means to locating information effectively.  

Cohen also outlines a few things that teacher-librarians can do to ensure they are not promoting and reinforcing the “Just Google It” approach.

• Make online searching mandatory in library school. Make it a core course.
• Not something that is mandatory at UBC as of yet, but something I would be interested in learning more about, however, an entire course, not so sure.
• Keep up with search engine news and how to use these tools to their maximum capabilities
• Absolutely – Professional Development. 
• Do not make Google the default page at your reference workstations. If you are going to do this, at least use the advanced page.
• Give students options and a model to follow. 
• Don’t enable. Not only should we teach better searching skills to our colleagues and users, we should practice what we preach. Don’t have a Google search box on your library Web page or blog. Don’t have canned Google searches on your Web page or blog that lead to atrocious results.
• If Google is all they see when they log in, of course they are going to be conditioned to use it. 
• Don’t forget the importance of using fee-based databases that your library pays for. Remember that “free is as free does”.
• I know a TL in my district who I have TOCed for in the past is trying to push her students away from Google and towards World Book. She is struggling with this because students just naturally turn to Google as their “research” authority.  

  I would also add:

• Talk with the classroom teachers and ensure they are on the same page. Many use the phrase “Google it” and “research” synonymously.

On another note…

Riedling (2005), touches on a quote taken from the American Library association which describes "information literate individuals as people who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information...They are people prepared for life long learning" (p. 6).

Riedling, also states later, “School library media specialists should foster information literacy, defined as the ability to access, comprehend, use, and evaluate information. School library media specialists must help students learn how to learn, to become lifelong learners” (p. 12).

These quotes remind me of Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power (2006), when she speaks of metacognition and “thinking about reading”. Gear’s approach to reading comprehension is by breaking the process down into different components, such as, visualizing, inferring, transforming, connecting and questioning. Although these components are not taught linearly like a research model, Reading Power does break the process down into manageable steps that students can relate and connect to – they are “thinking about reading”. We would never expect our students to figure out how to read on their own, so why would we expect them to know how to research effectively without ever being taught? We should then be teaching our students to “think about researching” as well. Without these skills, of course they are going to rely on what they know and are familiar with – and that is to Google it.  

Works Cited

Cohen, Steven M. "Thinking and Researching--Don't Just 'Google It'." Information Today 23.6 (2006): 28-29. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. EBSCO. Web. 22 May 2011.

Gear, Adrienne. Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read. Markham, Ont.: Pembroke, 2006.

Riedling, Ann. Reference Skills for the School Library Media Specialist: Tools and Tips. Worthington, OH: Linworth, 2005.