Entry 2: Evolution of CALL and Search Engines and Online Database

Hello again.

So this week we learned about these two topics which are the evolution of CALL and the search engines and online database. And we are going to start with the evolution of CALL first. 
At first I thought CALL is just, well...CALL. Apparently it started with the first stage of CALL which is the behavioristic CALL. Behavioristic CALL or BC was developed from the behavioristic learning theory that focuses on drilling and repetitive learning. And after receiving some backlashes from experts regarding BC in which it was claimed to resemble animal training, communicative CALL happened. Communicative CALL or CC which focuses on students' fluency on the language rather than grammar. In other words, teacher uses CC to focus on their speech rather than writing or learn the technical part of a language which is grammar. I think it is a good move since I noticed that students who are learning second language cannot speak fluently even though they understand the grammar rules etc. It is all because of they are lacking in fluency in the language. And lastly, we have integrated CALL or IC. Integrated CALL is basically it integrates real-world materials such as video, internet, softwares etc into CALL. With the advancement of the internet, the advancement of CALL was also heavily influenced by it as the internet is used with call for a variety of purpose such as the online dictionary, images, information etc. 

            In conclusion, even though behavioristic and communicative CALL is considered out of fashion, they are still being widely used among teachers. Other than that, we can see that with the advancement of technology and the availability of the internet, many core ideas of CALL are changing as we can see in this chapter.  



THE SEARCH ENGINES AND ONLINE DATABASE




       The second part of this entry is going to be about search engines and online database. Normally people got confused between a browser and search engines and some of them did not even know what database is. All of this originated from the World Wide Web (WWW).


Example of search engines


WWW is a web tool that allows users to enter keywords and find information on websites contained in its database. Those keywords can be entered or searched on the search engines such as Google or Yahoo. It basically uses software that collects data from the Web and includes it in its database. Database is the place where all the information from the Web is stored and each search engine has its own database. The keywords that we keyed in might yield different results for different browser. There are four parts of a search engines:

·         Database to store references to Webpages
·         Web-Crawlers to find and compile indexes of Web Pages
·         User Interface or UI
·         Information Retrieval System (IRS)

Database is a storage place where all indexed webpages are stored and it contains only essential information on a Webpage. This is where the user’s query is matched. 
Google Database Center in South Carolina

Web-Crawlers or spider is an automated program or bot. It is the one that collects all the information from the Web Page by collecting the keywords, titles, synonyms, access frequency and relevancy. The information found by the spider will be indexed and stored in database. 
WebCrawlers or Spider

User Interface (UI) is a user-friendly app/site/page where users may input query and search results are presented. Information Retrieval System (IRS) is a system used to match the user’s query to indexed webpages found in the database. The results presented in rank according to relevance.
Google User Interface

Other than that, we have specialized search engines. It is basically a search engines that is tailored to search for a specific area such as researches, articles, journals, encyclopaedia etc. Examples of specialised search engines that we usually use are Google Scholar, Education World, Art cyclopedia and pipl.com. Other than that, we have MetaSearch Engine. MetaSearch Engine is a search engine that matches the user’s query to multiple search engines such as MetaCrawler, SavvySearch and Dogpile.  

Examples of specialised search engines



In conclusion, we can see that the advancement of technology have influenced us in terms of information search and storage. We have created a world where all the information is at the tip of our fingers. 

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