Magazine

Futile Searching

6/28/2012 By:

Consider these facts the next time you search the Internet for that ideal lesson plan:

• More than 7 in 10 (72.6%) educators search for instructional resources at least several times a week.

• More than 1 in 4 respondents (25.8%) search daily.

• Only 1 in 4 (24.6%) educators describe their searches as “usually successful.”

• 66% say they get too many “irrelevant results.”

• 63% say that searching for educational resources is “too time consuming.”

• 62% say that the search results they get “do not indicate specifics for grade level, cost vs. free, standards alignments, and other search criteria.”

SOURCE: This study was conducted by The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), which is working to make it easier to publish and discover quality educational content and products online. LRMI is led by the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons, and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.