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May 30, 2006
Google Trends
Google Trends
I just read about a new Google service called Google Trends, which allows you to “compare the world's interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they've been searched for on Google over time. Google Trends also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.” To learn more about the service, click here.
I searched for the following terms: moodle, sakai, webct, blackboard. Not surprisingly, Blackboard was the leader in both search volume and news reference volume. I was interested to see that globally the term “moodle” generates more search volume than Sakai:
Click here
But if you limit the geographical region to the United States, the two CMSs are virtually even.
Click here
Time will tell if this new Google tool will be helpful to online educators. Like most Google Tools, I imagine we will find some creative uses for the tool that were not even considered by the creators!
Posted by mlindema at May 30, 2006 10:23 PM
Comments
One issue with Google trends is that it doesn't separate by context, so "blackboard" generates news listings for news articles mentioning the thing you write on with chalk as well as the learning system.
Searching on Blackboard Learning System vs. Moodle gives very different results.
Another interesting comparison is WebCT vs. Moodle.
Posted by: Michael Penney at June 3, 2006 11:37 AM
Yes, good point Michael. Searching for the course management system Angel in Google Trends presents the same problem as Blackboard -- a lot out out of context results. Even Sakai pulls in out-of context results (e.g. Iron Chef Sakai). I imagine Moodle is probably pretty accurate. ;-)
Posted by: Michael Lindeman at June 4, 2006 11:33 AM