Gladly Would I Teach

Throughout the semester, I require students to research contemporary and often controversial, topics. Students must read a variety of sources and then present their findings to the class or share the information they uncover in a paper or project. Although the topics are quite limited in its early days of development, a new Google service may become a tremendous research aid in the future.

Google Living Stories allows users to access one URL where they can track stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post. Currently, the only topics available are health care, swine flu, global warming, the war in Afghanistan, executive compensation, and a couple of stories of importance to Washington, DC.

Readers who click on a topic can then follow the timeline of the topic, read news stories and editorials, watch videos, see important quotations, etc. all on that topic. Google Living Stories provides a quick primer on topics, but the sources are so extensive, that it appears to be an excellent research tool.

It’s new and limited to a handful of topics and pulls sources from only two newspapers. However, as Google adds sources and topics, Google Living Stories may transform into one of the most important sources we have for tracking important developing stories.

As I played with the website, I, once again, thought about how the Internet is changing how we conduct research. Initially as I looked at Google Living Stories, I did not like it because it provides students with sources without requiring them to search on their own. I quickly changed my mind, however. One of the Internet’s greatest strengths is the ability to perform quick searches and deliver sources that once took individuals days to find. Sure, students don’t have to search as long as students of the past, but the time they save from searching can be spent in reading and analyzing more sources (including graphics and videos) than we ever thought possible.

It’s early in development, but I like what I see so far in Google Living Stories.