The Whole World in a Google In Google they trust. ""In one sense, with Google, everything is knowable now," said Esther Dyson, who publishes Release 1.0, a technology-industry newsletter. "We were much more passive about information in the past. We would go to the library or the phone book, and if it wasn't there, we didn't worry about it. Now, people can't as easily drift from your life. We can't pretend to be ignorant." But the flood of unedited information, she said, demands that users sharpen critical thinking skills, to filter the results. "Google," she said, "forces us to ask, `What do we really want to know?' " Full story at NYTimes" (free registration required). [LISNews.com] This is a fun article about the search engine that has become such a huge part of popular culture. Is it really changing culture and is the change a good one? 1:07:05 PM     [comment []];[]

Ask Them What It Means Reading a lost art [The Denver Post] [Library Link of the Day] This article by Heather Grimshaw has the subtitle "Comprehension drops, causing teachers to rethink instructional plan." I was interested to see once again a call for instruction that includes questioning, discussion, and analysis, rather than just regurgitation. The article talks about "fake readers," who must be related to "fake researchers" -- the ones who copy and paste and otherwise plagiarize their papers. 12:48:53 PM     [comment []];[]