Competencies are Key to Better Search – Specialist Group Education and Search Literacy Founded
Why do we need to learn more about internet search? How can we search the internet in a more ethical and efficient way? How do we protect our data? Which search engines are recommendable? How can we can we teach children and young people skills in internet searching from the very beginning? The topic of search literacy belongs on the public agenda and the school timetables.
Information about a book, plants or the history of the region in which they live: even in primary school, children search for information on the internet. However, they usually learn nothing about how search engines work, especially nothing about how their operating companies work. In class, it is rarely questioned whether all the information is really correct and how sources of information are to be judged.
In order to change this situation, the Open Search Foundation has now founded a specialist group to teach knowledge and skills in the field of internet search. Professor Melanie Platz of Saarland University in Saarbrücken and Professor Alexander Decker of Ingolstadt Technical University head the new group.
Educational concepts, teaching packages, live actions at schools, but also competence building for adults are on the programme of the new group.
The group will start with a big “bang”: on the action day “Doors open with the mouse” on the third of October at Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences, members of the Open Search Foundation will explain to primary school children how Internet searches work and what they should pay attention to in order to search the Internet more safely and better.
Melanie Platz explains in an interview why children of primary school age should learn how search engines work.
