Boolean Forever

Tonight's foray into internet surfing was fun and educational. While I've been aware of Boolean searches, I had never seen or noted that "NOT" was a possibility. This combined with the use of Kartoo ended a two year search for what an Elizabethan Ship Hull cost. (The Revenge cost L4000 and was 400 tons. The Ark Royal at 500 tons cost L5000. Kindly notice a rule of thumb of L10 per ton.) Any way, as someone who has tried this search before, I usually got overwhelmed by shops, museums, etc. that were selling models. Being able to NOT "model" cut down the number of hits. Kartoo's mapping of sites enabled me to avoid stores, book stores, and on the first try to point out an interesting website that had the answer to my question! Huzzah! (can you tell I'm still jazzed out that...).

Based on tonight's discussion, I think the first thing I want to do (which I already started)is locate some tutorials for boolean searches so I can find out what all is possible under Boolean. Secondarily, I think I will also be keeping an eye open for tutorials for K-8 students. While I may have a classroom of digital natives, quick surveys of classes that my kids are in show that not every household is connected to the new.

As for what to do for my students is to have the same discussion we had tonight. Discuss boolean operations, and practice (use small group format) doing initial searches, and identifying ways to cut down the number of hits to pare down to what is useful. This would include going over the various search tools. For students in particular, any search engine that shows maps has got to be sweet, not to mention that much more useful for getting to useful info.

Last note for the nite. As of 9/15/4, 321 Studios has officially closed their doors. It is unclear whether or not 321 will continue it's fight against Hollywood. I fear that Hollywood has yet again over run a legitimate right of media owners.