Without a trace.


Yes, the basic conceptual reason for not lingering on the techniques of bookmarking was that it's become about as easy, if not easier, to find something again via a Google search than it is by searching within your bookmarks, but I admit that there was another reason as well.

Most of the computer centers where I might teach today are "protected" by software that revert the computer back to a sort of virgin state when the computer is closed down. Ostensibly this is so that any harmful materials that users (usually meaning pupils, but often just anybody at all) might have uploaded to the computer. Somebody inadvertently uploaded a virus? No sweat - when the computer gets restarted, it won't be there. Somebody spent his (or her?) time viewing pornography? No trace of it will be left at the next reboot. But that also means that your class created folders for bookmarks and devoted an entire lesson to creating bookmarks within those folders? You can be sure that by next reboot they're not going to understand why doing that was an important, or useful, activity.



Go to: The tyranny of search.