I did the 3rd search engine activity. Googling "Darren Pine" brought up many sites that had a direct connection to something I'd done or was currently involved in-- I'm on the staff pages of the graduate school, the Missouri Review, Center Literary Journal, English Grad Student, and, oddly enough, I'm still listed as an adjunct professor at the St. Louis Community College. There's an interview I did back in 2000 with writer Orson Scott Card, as well as the writing lab article we all were asked to contribute, a lukewarm review of a production of my full-length play Dance of Bees, and an ad for an anthology which contains a short play I wrote. In addition to sites about something I'd done were geneological lists of other Darren Pines, and combinations of the words Darren and Pine in some respect, such as "Pine Cone #2" a painting by Darren Maurer. Of course, there were also a lot of sites on Pine trees as well. Overall, 798,000 hits.
Googling white turned up 763 million hits, compared to black which garnered 917 million. Caucasian turned up 24 million, while Asian 175 million and hispanic 45 million. Irish turned up 113 million, German 338 million, while Mexican turned up 94 million. Most of the hits were not surprising as far as content goes. Male (359 million) did not turn up as many hits as the word men (701 million), and Female (321 Million) did not turn up as many as Woman (574 million). The male sites seemed to be about men's health, though some were specifically directed to homosexuals.
When I googled my age, 35, I found a lot of articles on getting pregnant after 35. It seemed that the concern for aging was mostly directed at females.
While this was an interesting activity, I'm not sure what the point of it would be, unless it could somehow be turned into a bigger assignment. While it's interesting to note the trends, it seems that the student would have to look at the sites themselves more in-depth in order to gain anything from the assignment other than a sense of how demographics work.
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Yes Darrin. I am not sure what the point of this exercise is either unless it is to introduce students to what is out there. My sense is that most of our students will already have a good idea of what is out there with regard to searches like this. Still, as you point out perhaps it can reveal some of the trends out there as they specifically relate to demographics.
If I were to use this activity in my class, I think students could use the results of their searches as a text to analyze.
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