Saturday, December 26, 2009

Understanding the Search Experiences of Children

Link to December 26 New York Times article, "Helping Children Find What They Need on the Internet".

Excerpt: Sponsored by Google and developed by the University of Maryland and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the research was aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information.

Like other children, Benjamin was frustrated by his lack of search skills or, depending on your view, the limits of search engines.

When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools.

No comments: