Thing 12: Rollyo

Well, like many other participants in our Learning 2.0 program, I am still skeptical about the value of Rollyo to me. I look at it, and I just don't get it. I look at other search rolls on the site, and I don't feel inspired to search them.

I think it has something to do with the fact that if I'm not familiar with the sites, I'd rather go browse them to see if they might have content of interest to me. I guess I sort of feel like if I'm just going to do a keyword search of some sort, I might as well cast my net wider and do a google search.

My reaction to Rollyo doesn't have to do just with the fact that I don't know who created a particular roll, and therefore don't know if I should trust their choices of sites. It extends to my own rolled search too.

First of all, it was really hard for me to buckle down and think of a topic around which to create a search. If it's a topic of interst, I've probably already found the sites I'm interested in looking at and I go to them directly.

I think it's a matter of how I like to search - I don't mind using a search engine like Google to find sites that might contain information on a topic of interest. But once I go to the site I want to explore it on its own terms, using the local navigation and contextual clues, as opposed to pulling up random pages in response to a 3rd-party or meta-search search.

Despite my reservations, I went ahead and created my own searchroll, which I titled Vision & Learning Search. This searchroll searches four web sites that I have used to educate myself about vision-related learning problems and vision therapy.

To tell you the truth, though, even though I'm the one who chose the sites, I'd still prefer to go to each site individually and explore it as opposed to trying to use my Rollyo searchroll.