Social Media Search Engines

About SMASHFUSE:

Smashfuse is a new social media search engine.  It allows its users to search various different social media websites at once or individually. 

My Search Query: Is there a correlation between students that are identified as having a learning disability and the high school dropout rate?

I have been concentrating on finding case studies, statistic information and other research based information about my search query, but this search engine has presented a new medium which I can use to take my research in a different direction.  I want to search for a personal story about a person with learning disabilities and how it has affected his/her life.  Therefore, I changed my search facets.  Since this database only allows keyword searches in a basic interface, I choose the phrase “high school dropout personal story”.  I then limited my search to YouTube. 

 
I do not know how many hits were retrieved because this database does not itemize its result list.  I found my best hit after scrolling down for a little bit.   

Best hit is : Finding Academic Success

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0FphkcfCj4

What I learned: Content

Billy Wilson was diagnosed with ADHD which is considered a learning disability.  However, despite being diagnosed at an early age it appears that he had to take matters into his own hands in order to become academically successful in school.  The high schools in his home town divides students into two categories (levels), Applied and Academic.  The Applied level is for those students who are merely getting ready to get a job, were as the Academic level is for students who are getting ready to go to college.  Wilson was placed in the Applied level due to his learning disability.  In tenth grade he decided to repeat the grade at the Academic level, because he wanted to go to college.  It was only while in the course of repeating tenth grade that he realized that he learns after a high level of repetition.  Realizing this learning strategy has enabled Wilson to become academically successful. 

I learned that students like Wilson simply do not learn like other students.  I think that as educators we learn to teach the strategies that work best for the majority of students.  However, this video demonstrates why it is so important for teachers to learn how to differentiate their lesson plans to meet the need of all their students.  These students require individualized learning strategies and above all they simply require more time to learn.

 

Search Tip:

While using Smashfuse, I found that it was faster to search individual networks, rather than search everything at once.  Another useful tip is that if you have been on the site for a while, you can click the refresh icon and get the latest hits without having to initiate a new search.          

Reflection:

Smashfuse lets its users search Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Vimeo, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram and Vine either individually or in combination.  One of the advantages to using this search engine is that it displays the results in an icon display that looks like a box.  Inside the box you can see information about the hit and the icons of the social network site in which the hit can be found.  The disadvantage to using this search engine is that it is slow to retrieve the items due to the number of material that it is uploading.  Additionally, this site does not have a help icon or menu.  I have come to rely on the help menu of the various databases which I have explored.  I cannot help but feel that this site is incomplete and unreliable due to the fact that it does not offer its customers any support options.