"If the news is that important, it will find me"

College student cited in WaPo (2009)

Search engines allow people to look up information on the topic that they are interested - people can search for local sports clubs, holiday destinations, cooking recipes, current affairs and any other topic that they are interested in and want to find out more information about. 


Social search engines are a more sophisticated type of search engine as they take into account the online profile that a user has created and developed. This enables results to be tailored towards how the person currently behaves online.


Teaching points in the classroom:

• What are the results that come up in a search? What is the order that the results come up in and are they reliable?
• In using someone's social profile in a search engine, how does that impact what results are displayed? What are some positives and negatives of using social profiles?
• Compare search engines - google, bing, yahoo and also the new search engines that are entering including searchcloud, witguides, timetube, taggalaxy, rollyo, hunch, flipboard and newstrust. Use the same keyword for all searches - what results do each show? How are they different or the same? 

The Evolution of the English Language

The English language has constantly been going through an evolutionary process.

The English language began to develop when the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes invaded England from across the North Sea in the 5th Century AD. Up until around the 1100s, "Old English" was spoken.

In the period of 1100-1500 AD, when the Normans invaded and ruled England, French was spoken amongst the royal court while the lower classes continued to speak English. At this point, as expected, many French words were added to the English language. Towards the end of this era, there was a significant change as the pronunciation of vowels became shorter and shorter. 


In the 1600s, the invention of printing also led to a fundamental shift in the English language. "Printing brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard (English Club)".


As English speakers today, if we were to go to England in the 5th, 8th, 12th, 15th or 18th centuries, we would barely be able to converse with the people. If we went back 50 years ago, the language would still be slightly different to what it is today.

The evolution of the English language is a constant process that is speeding up in line with technological advances and in a world in which we live that expects us all to 'go, go, go'.

As teachers going out into a world where language continues to be a fundamental pillar to our society and is also undergoing rapid change, we need to make sure that we embrace netspeak, txtspk and whatever comes next. Otherwise, there will be a "Words Their Way" written for us by our students and they will be able to assess and categorise what developmental phase we are in and give us word sorts based on this (electronically, of course).

Playing with Hyperlinks

Dear Diary,

On the weekend, I went to Canberra to participate in the Dragon Boat National Championships. I am in a WA team called Blades and we won the State Championships. We did ok at the Nationals - made it into a few semi finals and paddled a lot! The afterparty was at the AIS and all the teams went so it was good for me to see my old Sydney team, too. I slept like a log when I finally got back home to Perth!!

Go Blades!!!!!!