Monday, April 21, 2008

Week 5, Thing #12: Roll(yo) Call!

Rollyo is the wish fulfillment of internet users who always wanted to search for items consulting only their trusted websites. After creating an account with Rollyo, and understanding what it has to offer, I was thrilled to discover all these specialized search engines. By restricting searches to specific websites, searchrolls filter out unnecessary or irrelevant websites that hinder your search. I tried SJLibrary's searchroll, typed in "ostrich" and I got all these articles from authoritative encyclopedias.

Searchrolls are interesting because they are crafted from websites that are deemed relevant by its creator. For example, I tried The Big Answer Deck searchroll, and put in "ostrich" and I automatically got articles from wikipedia. But this is why Rollyo can be so useful when doing internet research, you can choose to include or exclude any website you want! I see great potential for Rollyo when teaching students about internet research. The majority of the librarians I know discourage students from using wikipedia or solely relying on Google for their research projects. Rollyo is one way to ensure that students are utilizing the correct internet sources. Teachers can use Rollyo to are expose their students to authoritative internet websites. They could even cross-reference the results of different searchrolls to demonstrate bias in internet searches and the importance of scrutinizing the academic authority of websites.

Rollyo's potential uses are not only for research, but also for recreation. You could create Harry Potter searchrolls or graphic novel searchrolls for fun. A searchroll can be created for any interest.

Creating my own searchroll was difficult, because I wanted to make sure that I had chosen relevant and authoritative websites. I tried creating a movie searchroll, using my favorite movie websites, but I found that it only works when you enter the title of a movie. I plan on tinkering with it further so that I can enter a keyword and out pops a list of movies. I am sure that there must be a website like this already. I also created a searchroll with my favorite dictionary websites, which includes my favorite slang website as well! This way, you can browse through various definitions of one word--like a very sloppy, poor makeshift version of the Oxford Dictionary.

Rollyo is another internet tool I foresee using fondly and frequently.