This has been a great reminder of the power the corporate internet machine has to shape our own thoughts.  I have been aware for awhile now that Google will return the search results which are most in line with what we appear to be interested in or value based on previous searches.  The challenge in this, is that we are continually reinforcing our own limited perspective with the assumption that everyone who populates google agrees with us.  Knowing this, I wasn’t surprised when the search terms for professor, boy, girl, teenager, etc. yielded the results they did.

I heard Alan November speak a few years back and he lead us through the same exercise covered in the article.  His encouragement to consider our own bias as we search for information is important. Like he suggested, I thought I knew how to do a google search but as I have a again been reminded using the google search tools suggested in this exercise gives us much more control on how we gather broad, unbiased information.  In this case, instead of simply reinforcing our own perspectives, we can be challenged with a new one.

Like learning any new skill I think it will take a while but I know I will become more proficient with practice.  I may eventually even form my own search style and habits.

Initially I tried to include to many elements into the search and it came back with no results.

Eventually I settled on  university research loc:canada leadership

It was not too challenging to find a .pdf about being a principal however finding a podcast related to my hometown took several tries.  Eventually I simply used vernon bc + podcast  and came up with a page which yielded some search results.

 

Over all this was a good exercise in being more specific in how I use Google.  As an additional skill, I also learned how to insert a screenshot into a document.  I explored both the function built within WordPress for this as well as the Windows snipping tool.