Blog Entry 5: Perlego and its AI Researcher

 (So here I am a day late writing my next blog in my personal challenge to write every day.  It isn't that I didn't write yesterday, it's just that it wasn't appropriate for this blog!

 Yes, I am still excited about Perlego and I have spent time every day since I discovered it, exploring its possibilities.  When you start poking around, the first thing you are likely to come across is the search bar.  You can use it in a traditional manner, looking for author, title, ISBN, etc. but more exciting still, is the AI Researcher.

I experimented with a research question and with key words and both were effective.  Below is a sample of the research question results: To what extent did the bombing of Hiroshima lead to the Japanese surrender in World War Two?

Keyword Search

The book results vary but that isn't surprising since the keyword search wasn't as focused as the research question search.

(I may update this blog tomorrow!)

Down Various Rabbit Holes

 I didn't write yesterday or Friday, not because I didn't have anything to discuss but because I was sucked down several rabbit holes and I still haven't really emerged.  The first was that of Perlego, which I hadn't heard of until Wednesday evening when a student emailed to ask if I could find a copy of a book called, The Oslo Accords 1993–2013: A Critical Assessment by Peter Bauck.  Well, no I couldn't, to my frustration, despite checking all my usual suspects.  Then, I alighted upon a reference to it online on a website called Perlego and down I went.  

I don't often get this excited about websites, especially ones which offer access to ebooks.  Truth be told, I don't enjoy reading online.  I do recognise all the positives of ebooks and of providing access to them for my students.  Though as luck would have it,  Perlego turned out to be far more than I could ever have expected with over a million academic non-fiction titles, appropriate for the upper secondary and the university level reader.  However, it didn't stop there.  It wasn't just the books but it was also the tools offered for interaction with those books.  (I'll list them and then discuss each later.)

1. An AI Researcher, which doesn't offer an answer to your question but suggests books from the collection which will help to answer it, and provides key excerpts from each suggestion.
2. A workspace for each of your topics of research 
3. A number of tools to assist the user in accessing the books
4. A notebook function
5. A way of setting up an assignment and sharing it with collaborators (or students) through the workspace.  Not necessarily meant for teachers but perfect for them!

There are likely to be tools and functions I haven't discovered yet but I will keep exploring and using Perlego for my own research and to find possible books for my EE and IA students.  

In my next blog post, I will expand on each of the 5 point above.