Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are our own and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of the Ogallala Public School District.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Instagrok- Find & Organize Internet Info!

The Internet is a busy place. Don't let your students be run-over by information overload! Instagrok allows students to type in a subject and instantly get a "Word Map" that includes related topics. Key topics, websites, images and videos are also listed. A perfect first-stop on the information highway.

That's just the beginning of the Instagrok journey, however. Using the slide bar at the top, your students can adjust the complexity of the results to suit their needs. They can also keep track of the sites they've visited and the information they've found by "pinning" to a Journal. As an instructor, you can create a class (for free). Your students can register as a student using that class name; they won't have to put in an email address AND you'll be able to see a history of the sites they are visiting.

As a side-note, "grok" comes from Robert A. Heinlein's Sci-Fi "Stranger in a Strange Land" and has been adopted by hackers/geeks. When you don't just know something, when it's become a part of you or enmeshed in your being, then you have grokked it. (Thank you, Wikipedia).

Instagrok does work on iPads, but not with Firefox. You'll need to use Safari or Chrome.

1 comment:

  1. And when I thought Instagrok couldn't get any cooler... when you try to login, you can log in w/ your Google ID (also known as your firstlast@opsd.org username and webmail- or Google Docs- password!)

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