Spring LI Update

Big picture ideas Opportunity to create practical take-home tips together Search engine optimization as an information literacy: Building engagement by revealing information architecture An observation supported by a story, interspersed with three simple teaching tips, and leading to a working theory. OBSERVATION: Students who understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO) become skilled Internet searchers. Definition one: search engine optimization is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Question: How many of you came here today excited to hear about Search Engine Optimization? No, really. Teaching Tip #1: Harness the power of complaining. Story DTC 356 Electronic Research and the Rhetoric of Information I was requested to include a unit on SEO. I said yes. What I learned (shock number one) Learning SEO is virtually indistinguisable from learning Google's search architecture. The motivations may be very different, but the content is the same. Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine Spiders crawl the web and build a collection of HTML content Google indexes this content into its own database PageRank is what makes the keyword list useful. (N.B. PageRank was inspired by academic citation analysis.) Google search prioritizes precision (making sure all results are relevant) over recall (making sure you get all the relevant results) Teaching SEO Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf Focus on your content and your audience Some HTML tags are priviledged. <title>, <meta name="description" content="...">, <h1><h2><h3> URL structure is important. Keep it clear, on target, and simple. meta keywords don't count <meta name=”keywords” content=”…”> Anchor text is considered part of a page What the students learned (shock number two) http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/mcy/1721281700.html <a href="http://ic.arc.losrios.edu/~ccli/">click here</a> <a href="http://ic.arc.losrios.edu/~ccli/">CCLI library conference</a> Students who successfully complete this course will be able to do the following: #2 Distinguish between central techniques for organizing and retrieving electronic information and evaluate these techniques for applicability to the job at hand http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0049.html Teaching Tip #2: Sometimes it is enough to just help them recognize there is a problem. Teaching Tip #3: Pitch library services as solutions to problems that your students acknowledge. teaching tips Working Theory: Teaching information architecture leads to information literate students. Applications: Information architecture in the one shot session? Contact: schiller@vancouver.wsu.edu http://informationgames.info http://twitter.com/nnschiller gtalk/buzz/greader:infoliberty rel="nofollow" Deb Gilchrist's Five Questions: 1. What do you want the student to be able to do * This is the outcome 2. What does the student need to know * This is the curriculum 3. What is the learning activity * This is the pedagogy 4. How will the student demonstrate learning? * This is the assessment 5. How will I know the student has done this well * This is the criteria How many metal bands are from Canada? a) http://www.google.com b) http://en.wikipedia.org b) http://www.metal-archives.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor#PageRank_algorithm Nicholas Schiller WSU Libraries Spring Library Instruction Update Pullman, WA May 17, 2010 Presentation available online: http://www.informationgames.info/blog/?page_id=190 http://www.google.com/howgoogleworks/ Next Steps: Expand my lit review beyond library literature Search Engine Blue Sheets? Write an article Design a tool to measure SEO training's effect on information literacy new text