InfoTeacher

Check out Spreeder — “free online speed reading application.”

I’m not sure what it is, but there must be a way to use it (probably not with your Dylexia students; but then again maybe because they see only 1 word rather than lines and lines of words . . . . who knows?). Anyway, what a cool, creative site.  (Maybe in a staff training?).

Kathryn Greenhill from librariansmatter.com – a librarian from Australia posts this on Slide Share.  Really having trouble with the embed, so here is the link.  (I’m not that happy with WordPress’ format – chose it and Edublogs so my district wouldn’t block it; gotta say – Blogger is MUCH easier!!)

In my district, even those of us who TALK quite a bit about these technologies are not DOING them enough. Quite a few more as asking “why bother?” – this show says a lot about why we should bother, though it only touches the broad range of what’s new – no details. In the end, a push to at least try one. (I especially like slide 137 — “No offense, future man, but is everyone in your time retarded?”). Very creative, broad encompassing and interesting.
 

I wasn’t sure it was true, but according to reliable sources, she’s gone. 

I thought everyone knew Ms. Dewey – at least all library/info/technology types — but I discovered today that she is more obscure than I thought.  This is the very same day that I discovered she might be gone.  

Picture from Wikipedia. URL of the Wikipedia entry on Ms. Dewey can be found here. 

In my school district, we frequently email our group for a quick answer. Today I emailed, and one of my colleagues quickly responded with EXACTLY the information I needed. She was a real Johnny on the Spot. I responded (to the whole group) with “never mind, Ms. Dewey found it!” (so that no one else would bother to send the very same info).

A quick note — I probably shouldn’t have called a female colleague Ms. Dewey. She could probably sue me for sexual harrassment. I meant nothing, but Ms. Dewey is the provotive, sexy search engine (I was smart enough to not say that on our district’s email).  

Back to my story. Just in case anyone was not familiar or didn’t know the address, I was going to send the Ms. Dewey URL in the email, but I decided to check it first.  By the way, that URL is (or was) http://www.msdewey.com. But if you go there now, all you see is an very plain page with a button inviting you to install Microsoft Silverlight (no idea what that is). 

So, I went ahead and sent the email, but  I stuck in a quick “never mind, Ms. Dewey is gone,” but I failed to remove the link. In response, I received many questions (one colleague even stuck a quick “are you going wacko over there?”).

Ms. Dewey was owned by Microsoft.  Back when I first discovered her, some were speculating that they were trying to test an entertaining interface to entice people away from Google. They simply used the search content from Live (at that time was it Live or MSN Search?), and let Ms. Dewey be the interesting and entertaining interface. She would always lead in with a short, but entertaining clip (like you had interrupted work at the Circulation desk in the virtual library in which she worked). She would ask you what you were searching for (like any good reference librarian!). Some days she was friendly, and some days she appeared impatient. If you sat idle, she would challenge you to hurry up or ask you if you were still there (knocking on the glass of your monitor). Often she would sing, dance, and had something entertaining related to the holiday or special occasion of the day. She always gave you good search results (not research, but search — she was after all only a search engine and not a real librarian or information professional).

Wikipedia says that “at some point the site became inactive.” They don’t even tell us when she went away. A terrible tribute.

Well, that’s what I get for working too hard. One of my favorite useful and entertaining sites went inactive and I failed to even notice.  I really should go home earlier so I can surf the web for fun.

Goodbye Ms. Dewey. Even though I hadn’t been to your site in quite some time (I confess I Google like the rest of the World), I will miss you. You were a rare fusion of entertainment and usefulness (ok, if you had been that useful, why did I keep going back to Google?).

Tags: Nature of Information

As a part of this new adventure, I am determined simply to post once in a while about something fun. Hopefully the fun will — most of the time — be related to information, learning, teaching or eduation. Sometimes it may be related to none of these.

Today’s fun post is about Ms. Dewey — a search engine that entertains, at least briefly. Nevertheless, she (I insist on personifying her, since her creators obviously intended this) produces interesting information when she is consulted. Check her out, here.  I’ve known of Ms Dewey for over a year. For a time, I actually tried to compare her results to the major search engines just to see if I could see a pattern. Alas, I’m not systematic enough to have discerned any. Somewhere along the way, I lost interest, until, well I don’t know what brought her memory back. So, in the interest of fun, I introduce Ms. Dewey, the informative librarian (with attitude).