Whoa: Making Google Searchable By Young Non- or Emergent-Readers

When we first started searching the web with kids, spelling was an enormous barrier. Google has done a lot to mitigate that problem, gently offering us (and even acting on) alternative spellings. But check out this tip from Andy Plemmons on the Barrow Media Center blog a few weeks ago:

Before students came, I installed the Google Voice Hotword Search extension in Chrome.  This allowed us to control a Google search with our voice.  For Kindergarten students who aren’t fluent in typing, this lifted a big search barrier for them.  We took our list of questions and took turns saying:

  • “OK Google”
  • When is the Chinese New Year?

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Google searched and spoke to us telling us that this year Chinese New Year begins on January 31st.  We continued this process to answer many of our questions.

Really cool. While Siri can help on iOS devices, and there are voice-command Google searches for smartphones and tablets, this nifty feature can remove a lot of barriers from those with vision impairments, emergent reading skills, and more. I didn’t find that Google could read aloud all of the answers, so it would be interesting to pair Andy’s discovery with teaching them how to highlight text and have the computer read it aloud to them (built into Macs, and free tools available for PC).

Oh, and this brings me to another point: when are more school districts going to open up browser choices beyond Safari or Explorer? There are so many student-friendly tools available as installable extensions on Firefox and Chrome that many students are missing out on.

PS – This extension is marked as being in beta. Your mileage may vary. 🙂

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