I used Google’s new Jazz interface for the first time yesterday, and I really like the filtering options for search results. Two of the search views in particular seem useful for teaching and learning.
Wonder Wheel
Click on the image for a full-size view.
The wonder wheel view provides a graphic search result similar to a concept map, with semantically-related topics as branches. When users select one of the sub-topics, a new layer of the graphic is created, and the text search results on the right change. The wonder wheel encourages discovery, and would be particularly useful for WebQuests.
Timeline
Click on the image for a full-size view.
The timeline view of the search results allows users to drill down the results by time period. In the example above, I was able to narrow down my search results to a 20-year period, which then yields another timeline with smaller increments. The text search results themselves are sorted chronologically. Certainly, there are a lot of ways to use the timeline view in teaching and learning.
Both views provide a nice visual interface for users to access information.
Kate Miffitt 