When I visited the "Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need" link, I was surprised to know the fact that there are quite many search engines on the Net that we can use for our professional purposes. Thanks Robert for showing that link!
Last semester I taught Speaking III containing Argumentative Speeches and Debates. This semester I'm preparing my students to participate in regional and national English debate competitions. As debating requires vast knowledge in many fields, both in pro and con sides, I need to help my students to find certain topics using Google, my favorite search engine. But there are actually several other search engines I can use.
I tried to compare several search engines to look for the pro and con of Euthanasia, a common topic for debating. Thus, I typed in my query: euthanasia +pro +con. The results are as follows:
Ask.com: 10 out of 14 results shown on the first page are of what I look for. However, the good thing is on the right side there is "Related Search" where I can find related useful links about the query I typed in.
Google: Great! All 10 results it shows on the first page is about the topic I want to know. It seems to me that Google is more precise than the previous search engine.
Glean Comparison Search: This search suits its name "comparison". It does give me comparisons on the topic I typed in. I need to choose positive and negative comparison terms.I find it a suitable search engine to find pro and con of debated issues. Awesome!
Google Custom Search: Actually it gives me the topic I'm looking for. However, it provides me very limited links. It mostly provides information from http://www.publicagenda.org/.
IDEA (International Debate Education Association): This website is dedicated to anything related to debates, one of which is debate topics. I can find the pro and con of Euthanasia easily here. The pro and con ideas have been there to be used. Cool!
I think I will recommend my students to use Google, Glean CR, and/or IDEA in order to find some controversial debate issues.
Hi Johanes,
ReplyDeleteJust like you, I am very interested in finding controversial topics for my students and have done the same search as you. All of them are good, but I liked IDEA and Glean best.
I am sure you will have a great debate competition. That is something we have not tried in my language school yet, but I think it is a wonderful experience where students can apply all they have learned and more since such activity requires a lot of preparation.
I wish you the best luck.