Search, Learn, Share (Phase 1)

Well, phase 1 is really just search and learn so far. ;)

In any case, the first prototype of the first phase of the “Search, Learn, Share” project is now ready for testing. So far it doesn’t do much, but it does accomplish these two things:

  • It presents users with this question: “What Do You Want To Learn?”
  • It uses their input to bring back a variety of resources, including websites, books, news articles, images, and video. (I’m focusing on Google’s specialized search tools for the prototype, and sadly Scholar has no API, so scholarly articles cannot be pulled in… yet.)

In the future it will also allow users to save, annotate, and share their searches (with the option to save related searches into “projects” and the option to subscribe to updates from a particular search) and their individual results (in a manner much like other social bookmarking serivices – in fact, I’m hoping for some serious integration). There’s other features I have planned, but that’s the gist of it… in a nutshell. ;)

At this point, this simple first phase prototype is ready for testing. Please let me know what you think – and what you’d like to see.

Version .01 – A tabbed UI that works only in Internet Explorer.*
Version .03 – A “single page” UI that works in any browser.

*I include this here because I think I might actually like the tabs better. What do you think?

I look forward to your feedback… and I hope some of you might even find the tool at this stage helpful for yourself or for your students.