Google Jockey and the Back Channel

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URinvited2 contribute to this page. Please add your contributions in the tables, preceded by your [linked name. I will formulate one coherent statement under each section, based on your input and my readings.
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Joyce Seitzinger	Phil
Kate Kelly	Nathalie LeFaivre
Natasha Adnams	Paula Butler
Asra Yasmeen	Janet Bradley
Steve Pallett	Justyna
Jane

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What is a Google Jockey?

"A Google jockey is a participant in a presentation or class who surfs the Internet for terms, ideas, Web sites, or resources mentioned by the presenter or related to the topic. The jockey's searches are displayed simultaneously with the presentation, helping to clarify the main topic and extend learning opportunities."(7 Things You Should Know about Google Jockeying, 2007)

Phil

A google jockey is a participant in a lecture or an online meeting who surfs the web, while the speaker is delivering their spiel, looking for resources (URLs, pictures, quotes etc) to either reinforce the speakers message or to deliver a varying viewpoint. They can also take IMs from other students and use these URLs as well. These resources can then either be shared with the class there and then, if the google jockey's laptop is hooked up to a projector, or the resources could be emailed to all participants at the end of the lecture/ meeting.

name

info...

Who is Google Jockeying? (case studies)

Phil	An account by Jerry Slezak http://jerryslezak.net/pedablogy/?p=326
	The university of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.
Jane	"Dr. Chen has been using Google jockeying all semester in his Western History class. He has been livening things up by getting a student to “Google” real-time during his lectures, searching the Web for resources relevant to the day’s topic."
Keller, C 2006, 7 things you should know about... online, Available from: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7014.pdf Accessed: 25.01..08.
name	info...

Why Google Jockey? (pedagogical reasons)

Phil	This allows the students to collaborate with the teacher in taking their learning in the direction that they want. It also empowers the students and could promote deeper understanding of the subject.
Steve P	If the jockey is a trusted peer of the students then s/he may have a better understanding of semantic and information challenges students may be facing than a teacher or teaching assistant would. It provides an additional resource for review work that may help to reinforce understanding, especially if the jockey results were combined with the main presentation (as in Elluminate). Experienced jockeys may demonstrate good information literacy techniques to their peers in a 'just-in-time' scenario.
Joyce	Thank you, Phil & Steve P!

• engagement of students
• empowering of students
• peer has better grasp of other students' level of understanding
• additional review source
• just-in-time
• can help easily distracted students, stay focused

How could you use Google Jockeying (in your teaching or training)?

Nathalie Lefaivre	I think this is a fantastic idea and have never heard of it in these terms. It reminds me of the job of a Teachers Assistant in post secondary environments. I think it would be great in almost any level of education and would be ideal to appoint a different Google Jockey for different topics/presentations. Being an instructor with a large class makes it difficult to do everything - we only have 2 hands. By incorporating a second person who can help with the flow of the class could certainly improve the learning of all students involved. For younger audiences I think it would be beneficial in teaching them how to research, use the web and how to present and help others in class.
KateKelly	I see application for Google Jockeying in the ESL classroom. Using a dictionary or thesaurus tool, the Google Jockey could find definitions and meanings of new vocabulary 'on the fly'. I also see it as a way of extending learning. Often classes 'hyperlink' to unexpected places. Using a Google Jockey, a class discussion, or new topics could be activated with background information provided by the Jockey. Ullman (2007) argues that rather than distracting, content screens can be synergistic for learners that are used to greater visual stimuli, thus making the learning more visually appealing, interesting and interactive.
Justyna	I agree with Kate's comment above. I think that having a Google Jockey looking words up in a dictionary and displaying the translation could greatly enhance a presentation in an EFL/ESL environment. However, this kind of session would require very dedicated students who feel comfortable in using English (since they'd have to divide their attention between the actual lecture and Google Jockeying. In this kind of scenario, more than one Google Jockey would be ideal.
Natasha Adnams	I had never heard of this but could see the use of a concept similar to Google Jockeying in the financial systems training that I use to facilitate. Not with Google though, with our Intranet. It would allow us to have the policy documents, entry screen as well as the output displayed together to hopefully make the connection between them a little stronger and easier to see. We have problems with people entering data and not understanding the implications of what they do. We could have a person showing the sections of the financial statements that are effected when an incorrect entry is made (sounds boring but is pretty significant in the long run).
Janet	If I understand this correctly, I believe I use something similar to this in my legal secretarial course. While I am projecting a case online and talking about the relevant statutes, a student is often scrolling through the statute to find the relevant citation and embellishing the presentation with her findings.
Chris Woldhuis	I have toyed in my classes with the different learning styles, and in particular with boys/males who need to fiddle. I am one of those people who tend to fiddle a lot, I translated that into a scenario where I would not allow myself to fiddle and found my concentration levels much lower. Applying this to the classroom, I allowed some students to "doodle" in MS Paint or similar, and found their concentration levels to be significantly improved. I now allow some students the virtual space to "doodle" in their own way, one site that has been useful is: Oxygen Factory Doodle Page. For many students this is brainless enough to concentrate on what is happening in the classroom. So what has all this rant got to do with Google Jockey??? Well for some of the students, the doodle page was not enough, and I found them web surfing, often sites of little value or relationship to the topic...but they were able to surf and stay focused...so the next step is to "Google Jockey". For my students, I would add the topics and links they found to the blog or forum post later...and then use this for further (student centred) research. So that is how I would use Google jockeying.
Joyce	Chris, I have added your comment as a pedagogical reason above, as well. Thank you for your insight and good luck with jockeying.
Jane_Ross	I can see this being used in my class for front loading for a unit of inquiry. I would have to insist that students recorded a fact from each site visited as it could become quite distracting. I think that my Grade 3 students would have difficulty coping with keeping up with the pace.
Joyce	Wow, you guys are amazing. Am creating a summary of your thoughts below.

Next steps:

• Chris W: progress students from random surfing to jockeying
• Jane: use for front loading

Tips:

• rotate the Google Jockey for different topics/sessions

Drawbacks to Google Jockeying

Phil	Depending on the search skills of the student appointed the Google Jockey, the efficiency of the system will vary. Also, the internet connection speed would need to be very high otherwise by the time the resource was found, the jockey could find themselves 3 or 4 searches behind.
Nathalie Lefaivre	If the Jockey is a student they may lack the information they required from the class as they were too busy searching the web at the same time that the presentation was being discussed. In this case it may be good to have a T.A. perform this responsibility so that students don't miss out on relevant information.
Janet	When a student is acting as the Google Jockey, she unfortunately misses some of the lecture.
name	info...
Kate	The success of the jockeying will depend on the search capabilities of the jockey. Watching someone search the Web during a presentation, come up with thousands of hits, some of which may or may not be relevant to the subject being discussed, seems very problematic. In my context, some websites are not suitable for public viewing, so I always pre-screen any web content that may be shown to the class - A lesson learned the hard way after googling 'sunbathing' in a class!. Also websites searched this way have no validation - is the information true? who are the authors?
Natasha Adnams	One of the drawbacks is that it could be distracting to users in the class to have two screens going at once. They could focus on the actual search process instead of the result and miss what the presenter was saying.
Steve P	Information overload: is it multi-tasking or 'task-switching'? I think there may need to be more research into this before many University faculty would adopt it.
Chris W	As I mentioned above, this would be great for those students who can handle it, but for those who can't, this would only reduce their attention on the more important aspects of the topic.
Justyna	As mentioned above, the Google Jockey often looses a part of the lecture because his/her attention is diverted. This could be a bit of a problem, especially in an EFL/ESL setting, unless the student was really dedicated and the session recorded, so he/she could review anything he/she might have missed at a later date.
Jane	I would be worried that young learners come across adult content. I prefer to be the Google Jockey as I could quickly close sites with inappropriate content.
name	info...

Thank you all for your contributions. Can you also help me to think of some ways we might mitigate these drawbacks?

Participants can get distracted

Organise the room so people can sit away from the distractions of the screen. Or set up 2 screens, one with the presentation and a separate one for the back channel.(Joyce)

Back Channel - Related concept

More and more, it's becoming apparent that a Google Jockey is only one version of a back channel, which is happening in many live conferencing/meeting/teaching environments.

What is a back channel?

Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of Linguistics to describe listeners' behaviours during verbal communication, Victor Yngve 1970.(just grabbed from wikiwotsit)

In Future of the Learning Space, Philip Long and Stephen Ehrmann predict that the back channel will be a part of the new classroom, as we examine "how (we can) use these current spaces more completely and effectively to teach in the most ideal ways imaginable" and "how (we can) improve our learning spaces so that we can organize our teaching and learning in even better ways". They list activities which a future classroom should enable. The following list of learning activities can be aided by a back channel:

• students to talk with each other during class,
• ability to shift from plenary to group or individual work
• let students use each other as learning resources,
• let teachers and students interact spontaneously
• enable the learner or the teacher to discover, import, and display information
• easily enable faculty members to spot patterns in students’ thinking in order to adjust instruction,
• enable participants to review previous classroom communication

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0542.pdf

Who is using the back channel?

At conferences

• Ewan McIntosh gives a back channel as one of the succes factors at his Unconferences. He says:

• OpenEducation2007: Locating and Learning has created a backchannel for use after the conference, until the next one, in a space entitled 51 weeks. It states "create your own personal program, schedule informal meetups, and "backchannel" chat in real time with other attendees of each session."

• Twitter at SXSW. Twitter gained a huge following after it was used as the main back channel, shown on screens around the festival.SXSW Showdown:Dodgeball vs Twitter.

In online live conferencing/presentations/events

• Ed Tech Talk - Women in Web2.0 - a recurring radioshow run via worldbridges.

The main part of this episode is an interview with Jo McLeay whose blog was nominated by Stephen Downes. The facilitators but also the attendees in the live chat, post comments, ask questions and post links to websites mentioned in the interview during the chat channel.
Women of Web2.0 - Show 56

• K-12 Online Conference used a back channel which Vicky A. Davis as an experienced back channel user, strongly recommends attendees to use.
• In the Traditional Oxford-style debates run by The Economist, such as this one on http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?debate_id=3&action=hallSocial Networking technologies and the change they bring in the classroom. As the two parties debate, attendees can vote and post comments about the debate topic and the arguments used.

In the classroom

• Vicky A. Davis started using the back channel in her classroom in September 2007. She anticipated that teaching students show to use this process, would be much the same as teaching her class to use blogs or wikis, as she had done before. Her husband, an experienced engineer, saw her students' ability to IM as critical for their future employment.

Have you used the backchannel or are you about to?

Have you had experience of the backchannel, at an online event or at a F2F event, as a participant, presenter or abstainer?

Name	Comment
Stephen	I haven't experienced back-channel at a conference, but I suspect my feelings would be similar to what I found here at http://acrlblog.org/2006/08/17/google-jockeys-for-conference-sessions/
Steve P	Not me. I already find powerpoint a distraction. I can multitask with the best of them, but when I go to a conference I want to hear a speaker or panel and have a chance to think about something in some depth, not have the same distractions I deal with all day long. What might be interesting though would be for librarians to info-jockey for disciplinary conferences - pulling up valuable sources, not necessarily through a simple Google search of key terms but by knowing that interesting sources will turn up in CiteSeer or PubMed or …But honestly, as a conference attendee I’d rather not be subjected to it.
Chris W	I have been at a conference where we had a very limited form of back-channeling and it worked OK, the use of SMS technology was a little clumsy, but meant that the comments/questions (mostly questions) were edited or filtered possibly before they went on screen...this could work well, as you only need one mis-user to ruin a speaker's good presentation.
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Our FET8611 Google Jockey experiences

The idea of examining the Google Jockey concept was sparked by our last live session during which another participant and I were bringing back links and data to the chat window in Elluminate, as people were talking about various topics.

Stephen Downes spoke about the Google Jockey idea last year during his workshop at eFest 2006 in Wellington. I was intrigued. Since then I've also found this backchannel in the chatwindow really handy during the Australian Flexible Framework's eShownTell sessions.

In order to get the best kG contributions, I want to trial it out during our live sessions.

For the first session I propose to keep things simple. Just me Googling and tracking down information and links about the topics discussed and posting them in the chat window. (If enabled in USQ's Elluminate, participants can keep a copy of the text in the chat window after the session.)

For the 2nd session, we can explore a little further and do either of two options:
- use Twitter, either as a backchannel or create a kG twitter account which collects all the tweets from kG participants.
Or...
- give the Google Jockey more options for bringing back information to the group, by giving him/her moderator rights. They can then post things to the whiteboard instead of only to the chat window.

After each session I would like the participants to post their experiences/thoughts below.

Recordings

All of these session were recorded and are available in USQ's Moodle course for FET8611-S3-2007. They can be accessed by

• clicking Live Classrooms in the left hand menu,
• clicking the name of this course
• and clicking the date and time of the session you want to listen to.

1st session - 11 Dec 2007

Google Jockey	1st session in Wimba, 11 Dec 2007
name	comments
What did you think of having a Google Jockey in this live session?
Paula Butler	I like the idea but of course in a session like this, it would always have to be recorded. Everything moves so fast. You need to be able to go back and look through the suggested resources at your leisure. It's not only multitasking for the jockey, but also the regular participant.
Asra Yasmeen	This was the first time I was experiencing a Google Jockey. In a session like this it’s difficult to concentrate on the links but if it was a conference or a seminar and if there was a need to get additional information to clarify a point then I feel Google jockey will be very helpful.
What was the best thing about having a Google Jockey?
Paula Butler	As soon as I was assured the session would be recorded, for me the best thing is the time that would be saved for me later if I wanted to further research anything. I'd have a kick-off point.
Asra Yasmeen	It was amazing how quickly Joyce was bringing all the relevant links to the session. I feel her research skills must be excellent. Though I didn’t have enough time to open the links during the session, it would be useful to go back to the recording of the session to find these useful links later to refer back to.
What was the worst thing about having a Google Jockey?
Paula Butler	It was distracting at first. Initially I was trying to read the link addresses as they popped up. No need really, as the session was recorded. I was also distracted thinking about the speed with which Joyce was working! And for the jockey, they really have to sacrifice taking part fully in the session.
Asra Yasmeen	I agree with Paula it was a bit distracting. We didn’t have time to open up the links and read through them. I also felt that if the Google Jockey was a participant in the class it would be difficult for the jockey to catch up with the discussion taking place.
Do you have any suggestions to improve the use of the Google Jockey?
Paula Butler	It's hard to suggest anything. It's all on the fly and you've got no idea what's going to come up. The only thing I can think of is to make sure that the jockey isn't a class participant who will lose out in some way in the session because of his/her 'duties'.
Asra Yasmeen	Enough time should be given to the participants to discuss on the web links that are brought to the discussion by Google jockey and these will be useful if the links will help the participants understand the topics better at that stage not at a later time. Otherwise if the Google Jockey is bringing up links that participants find them irrelevant or they don’t have time to access them during the discussion then I feel it won’t serve any purpose.
After this session, can you think of a situation in your own environment where you can use a Google Jockey?
Paula Butler	With my students here in the Middle East, everything would have to be vetted beforehand. I read earlier in this page about Kate's unfortunate incident Googling 'sunbathing'. However, I liked the idea of a dictionary or thesaurus jockey.
Asra Yasmeen	There was a Math Conference that was organized in the college where the presenter showed the teachers how they can integrate technology in Math classes, make use of different videos on YouTube that were Math related, websites related to Math etc. In this situation it would have been helpful for the presenter to have a Google Jockey who could do this for him while he is explaining things to the audience. That would have saved time and would help to get continuous attention of the audience as they don’ t have to wait until the presenter types the link and brings up the website.

2nd session - 08 Jan 2008 AM

Google Jockey	2nd session in Wimba, 08 Jan Dec 2008 in morning
name	comments
What did you think of having a Google Jockey in this live session?
Jane Ross?	I really appreciated have the Google Jockey because I didn't have to wait my turn to be able to contribute my ideas or ask questions.
Chris WoldhuisI found it really useful, I enjoyed following the links to see how someone else was thinking the conversation was going, or had been. Sometimes my train of though was different to Joyce's and so this brought in a perspective that would be missing without the jockey! Thanks Joyce
Full Name?
What was the best thing about having a Google Jockey?
Jane Ross?	It was fast and catered to the individual - me. I found that by the time I got a chance to speak the topic of conversation had changed tact and my comment didn't apply. Google Jockey allowed me to contribute much more.
Full Name?
What was the worst thing about having a Google Jockey?
Jane Ross?	Sometimes I felt that I was going a little cross eyed trying to keep up!
Full Name?
Do you have any suggestions to improve the use of the Google Jockey?
Jane Ross?	I would have preferred the text to be larger. I'm getting old!
Full Name?
The Back Channel is a concept closely related to the Google Jockey. It is a chat session (can be many tools) that is running at the same time as a main presentation, seminar or lecture and where attendees/participants can share their thoughts in the background. Was that happening in this session? If so, was that useful to you?
Jane Ross?	Well it kept a record of all the chatting didn't it? I mean I could return later to access a record right?
Chris Woldhuis I think there were a few comments "thrown around" Skype whilst getting others online, this is a form of back channeling, and I thought it was good. Kept the conversation going whilst doing some other tasks.
Full Name?
After this session, can you think of a situation in your own environment where you can use a Google Jockey or the Back Channel?
Jane Ross?	Only with the other Primary School teachers. It might liven up the weekly meetings! My students don't have enough English to be able to keep up with the pace.
Full Name?

3rd session - 08 Jan 2008 PM

Google Jockey	3nd session in Wimba, 08 Jan Dec 2008 in evening
name	comments
What did you think of having a Google Jockey in this live session?
Justyna	It was great having a Google Jockey in the session. It was very useful and added a lot of depth to the session. Good job!!!
Full Name?
What was the best thing about having a Google Jockey?
Justyna	It allowed us to add to the conversation without having to speak, and it also allowed for us to continue a train of thought after the spoken conversation continued on a different topic.
Full Name?
Full Name?
What was the worst thing about having a Google Jockey?
Justyna	Sometimes there were too many conversations all at once, so it was hard to keep up with the answers at times or try to answer a question a few lines up. Also sometimes the links seemed to just float in the air ... as the conversation continued and the original question disappeared from view.
Full Name?
Full Name?
Do you have any suggestions to improve the use of the Google Jockey?
Justyna	Perhaps there should be two text boxes: one for general chatter and one for links and resources.
Full Name?
Full Name?
The Back Channel is a concept closely related to the Google Jockey. It is a chat session (can be many tools) that is running at the same time as a main presentation/seminar/lecture and where attendees/participants can share their thoughts in the background. Was that happening in this session? If so, was that useful to you?
Justyna	Is the wimba chat box considered a back channel? If so, then we were having our own short conversations as the main conversation was going along its own course. As I mentioned above, all the small conversations did get a bit confusing at times, but still it was a very useful tool in the session. I wonder if adding additional back channels like twitter of messenger would add or take away from the confusion of so many conversations at once. We should try that next time.
Full Name?
After this session, can you think of a situation in your own environment where you can use a Google Jockey or the Back Channel?
Justyna	Unfortunately not really. The most Google Jockeying I do is when I talk to my mom on Skype and send her links using the IM box.
Full Name?
Full Name?

Related knowledgeGarden pages

(it is a good idea to also say why the pages are relevant)
Twitter Twitter is often used as a back channel tool
Google Docs The Google Docs presentations have a chat function that can be used as a back channel.

Related web sites

(it is a good idea to also say why the pages are relevant)
Google First place to start Google Jockeying

References

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