Both students and professors, athletes and coaches alike were all in attendance to hear John Anderson of ESPN fame lead the seven panelists in questions primarily concerning the effects of technology on college athletics. The panelists were Mike Alden, University of Missouri Director of Athletics, Phil Bradley of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Myles Brand of the NCAA, VP of Sponsorships at AT&T Jamie Butcher, T.J. Quinn of ESPN, Sonja Steptoe of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, and ESPN.com and Magazine senior writer Wright Thompson.

Brands started the panel with discussion about the exploitation of student athletes. He discussed the commercialization of college athletics and how college athletes are often treated more like professional athletes rather than student athletes. Brands suggested the problems comes from commercialization of athletics by universities caught up in a spending frenzy. After answering questions from his fellow panelists, Brands asks that journalists present games in a way that the athletes are college athletes and not pros. In rebuttal, Quinn stated that it isn't the journalist's job to present the values of the NCAA, but to present exactly what he or she sees.

The panel then transitioned to Alden's discussion of the exploitation of student athletes using new media outlets such as Facebook, Myspace, and text messaging. He stated that he can try to manage student athletes and these medias, but he cannot control them.  His job is to remind student athletes to be responsible when using Facebook, YouTube, or any other site similar to these. Alden also talked about the importance of keeping some things private from the media, such as hiring a new coach, while keeping himself accessible to the media for timing appropriate questioning.

All panel members expressed concern for new media, such as blogs and message boards, allowing anyone to put their opinion into the sports journalism world. Quinn summed it up best by saying, " We were the gatekeepers, but now there is no gate around it [news]." Thompson explained that there may be 1000 rumors on a message board and 998 may be false, but he, as a reporter, still needed to go through them to find the two posts that are leads to a bigger story. He also said that he will follow a story through to the publication date no matter what another news source, credible or otherwise, publishes about the topic preceding his piece. Steptoe contributed that sometimes these new forms of media can be used as an offensive weapon against the people using blogs and message boards.

After taking questions from the audience, the session recessed for a short break before the second session. Unfortunately, I had another obligation and couldn't attend Part Two to see what conclusions the panel came to regarding new media and sports journalism. I'd like to end this post with a thought form panelist Phil Bradley.

"You can still be a good journalist covering a bad team, just like a good player on a bad team." - Phil Bradley on covering sports fairly and accurately

• Rollyo
• Google Custom Search Engines
• Yahoo! Search Builder
• Microsoft Macros
• Gigablast
• Quintura
• Eurekster Swicki
• Topicle

I've mentioned it before on more that one occasion, but it's worth saying again. Phil Bradley writes an informative blog and is a valuable source of information for Teacher- Librarians. He created the above  picture for a presentation he gave and made it Creative Commons for others to use. Great sharing Phil - I love the picture as it encompasses the newer search engines now available. I (and I'd have to say the majority of students at my school) continue to default to Google as do the vast majority of the population. I was pleased to hear a staff member say today that she gets her students to use Mooter after I introduced it to her last year. She thinks the students can make greater sense of the results with the clustering technology it employs.

I've read about a couple of new search engines via my google reader that may be useful. Phil highlighted Green Maven - the green search engine for people interested in looking for websites focusing on green issues - sustainability and the like. I searched for light globes and my return focused on the energy efficient kind. Phil's take on it was this;

It works well if what you want is in that subject area - if you do rather more general searches the results start to get a little bit flaky.  

Jane Hart highlighted another quirky offering aimed at the K-12 audience. It's called Boolify and uses a drop and drag of pieces that resemble a jigsaw to teach kids the importance of boolean logic in their searches. I can see the appeal for younger kids but think secondary students would get frustrated with the time it takes to formulate a search. It could be good to use when teaching kids explicitly about boolean operators however, particularly in the junior end of secondary schools. It's worth having a bit of a play with. It's creator, Dave Crusoe, has said this about it;

"So, we've worked with a team of librarians and others to develop something called Boolify, a graphical search tool meant for K12 use.   It pulls results from Google's SafeSearch (Strict), so it's reasonably classroom-safe, and we get the best of both worlds: a great way to understand and build searches, as well as great results provided by Google."

That brings me to the point of this post. Phil has pointed out a new search engine called How Do Ya? The search box has 'How do you...' already inserted, and you then put in whatever it is you want to know how to do.  Some of the examples appearing on the front page include plan a wedding, write like Kurt Vonneget, paint like Pablo Picasso and fly a plane. Phil tells us that;

"The engine goes off and finds pages that give you that sort of information, and it also provides various ways of narrowing the search down, such as 'what do you need, who can help, why do it and where should you go'. " 

It is powered by Exalead, a new search engine that Phil recommends in another post. I had a look at Exalead and it looks pretty good. I like the fact that your search results page provides you with thumbshots of sites and allows you to load a preview. Phil points out numerous other features so make sure you read his post. I have to admit to being overeliant on Google - it's habit and I do like my iGoogle page. I do think it's important to explore and be aware of other search engines, particularly when you are teaching students to be discerning users of the Web. Give Exalead a go. 

(Picture - accessed from howdoya.com)

Google has responded to Microsoft's bid to takeover Yahoo. David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google has posted a response on the Official Google Blog, and they're not happy.

According to David, Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. 

He goes on to to say;

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could it also be that Google sees the merging of these two companies as a threat to the dominance they now exert over the Web?

I don't know if we're seeing a Luke Skywalker vs Darth Vader battle here, or if there are any bad guys at all. What will be interesting is what could possibly happen if Microsoft is successful. No doubt new tools to play with and a Google fightback. Interesting times we live in. Thanks to Download Squad and Phil Bradley for alerts to this post.   

*For those who read my previous post -pleased to report car keys found by kind citizen and returned to me today. To Lynne, who did the good deed and refused a reward for her kindness, my hope is that karma comes around and serves you well.

I spend a fair bit of time reading about how search engines work (particularly Google),  but I have to admit that I came across a new term today via Phil Bradley's site. The term is Googlebomb. According to Google's Webmaster Central Blog, this is what a Googlebomb is;

Technically, a "Googlebomb" (sometimes called a "linkbomb" since they're not specific to Google) refers to a prank where people attempt to cause someone else's site to rank for an obscure or meaningless query.

A better explanation (I think) appears at Google Blogoscoped;

A Googlebomb means a lot of people get together to link to a specific site, often an “enemy site,” using specific e.g. funny link text. This way, the target site will appear ranked at #1 in Google for this text, making for an embarrassing effect.

According to Blogoscoped, the Church of Scientology have been Googlebombed when the search terms 'Dangerous Cult' are used. Their site comes up as the first result, even though the homepage at this time contains the word “dangerous” but not the word “cult”...  There's no doubt it is embarrassing for the Church of Scientology and Wikipedia already have it covered in their page entitled Google bomb;

As of January 29, 2008 Google bombing during Project Chanology has caused the main website for Scientology to appear as the first result when searching "dangerous cult", as reported by Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews.

Something to use when teaching students about how search results can be manipulated when people know what they are doing.

My new good friends at Securent, Rajiv and Ranjeet, had Ronnie there signing footballs and I'm lucky enough to be getting one.