Un reciente estudio aparecido en Science Daily sobre el uso de los motores de búsqueda concluye que buscar no sólo nos ayuda a encontrar datos sino a aprender. Buscar en la red no sólo forma parte de nuestra rutina diaria, sino de nuestro proceso de aprendizaje:

«The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users’ own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people’s learning styles can affect how they use search engines.

«Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect,» said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. «Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs«.

Search engines are a Source of Learning (la negrita es mía).

Vía Search Engine are Teachers, Cory Doctorow. Boing Boing.