Image Searches: Technology's impact on student thinking (unless we intervene)

Having students use images in their work is pretty standard now.  Adding an element of visual communication to even standard writing assignments can deepen exploration of a topic or idea and add an element of creativity.  When I first started encouraging or requiring students to include images in assignments, it was easy from a teacher's point of view - give some image guidelines, check for attribution, and have students find some good images.

It all started to fall apart several years ago when image search began to improve.  It hit rock bottom for me one normal day at the start of the school in 2011.  The indelible memory of a little warm-up activity for our unit on Adaptation still haunts me.  I asked students to find 2-4 images of things that represented innovation to them.  Then we were going to discuss in small groups why those images were connected to the concept of innovation.  A student raised her hand looking incredibly frustrated.  I went over to see what was wrong and she said, "There aren't any good images for adaptation."  

I asked what she was using as a search term, and she looked at me like I was somehow defective for about 5 seconds before replying, "Adaptation..." as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.  

Now a little note about my instructions and my goal...I had asked students to find images that REPRESENTED adaptation.  To me, this meant thinking about adaptation, figuring out something that had adapted or showed some element of adaptation, and then using that as a search query.  For example, I might think that a human hand represents a physical adaptation that allows humans to build things, so I might search for 'carpenter'.  To show how communication has changed, I might search for 'texting' and 'iPhone' to show how we have moved away from phone calls.  This kind of thinking is particularly important in middle school because it is a developmental step towards greater abstract thinking.  For some students it remains difficult for quite a while.

I had seen the trend towards literal search queries (and literal thinking) developing in my students as image search improved, but this was the most glaring example I had encountered.  I stopped the class and asked them to share their search queries; at least half of them were searching for 'adaptation'.  We ended up having a big class discussion about it in which I asked two questions:

• What do you think the goal of the assignment was?
• What's the problem with just using 'adaptation' for the search instead of choosing what to search for?

As the discussion went on, the answers became more detailed and coalesced into two main points.

• The goal was to abstractly represent a concept.  That is, students were supposed to try and represent an idea (adaptation) with an image of some thing.  [Abstract thinking was a something we had discussed and explored previously.]
• The problem with this kind of search is that there is no thinking.  The user ends up letting the search engine do all the thinking for him/her. 

I told the class that I would never intentionally insult them by giving them such a brainless assignment as this.  'Type in ____________, choose a picture, save' was not the way I would have them spend their time.  At the end of class, I was left to ponder how I was going to address the problem.  

After quite a bit of reflection, I settled on three strategies that I now make a regular part of my classroom practice.

The most important change I made was to have students regularly create their own images for almost all assignments.  This means going a lot more slowly in order to give time for photography or drawing, but it's also more creative.  Students have to plan for and then capture images to represent what they are thinking.  Thinking is the key element here as they have to take a photograph of a thing to represent an idea.

For some situations, I do occasionally still have students search for images.  Now, however, I always make them write down their search queries on a planner first.  Again, this means taking a bit more time, but I might ask students to find three images.  Before they start, however, I have them write down five things they want to find.  For the adaptation example, that might be a hand, a computer, a tadpole, a snow tire, and a feather.  I also make time at the end of any task like this to have students discuss with their peers why the images are representative of their thinking.  

Finally, we openly talk about the issue in class.  It makes for some interesting discussion about technology and its place in our lives.  

Below, a couple of examples of letting a search engine think for you.