About Maarten Sprenger

Maarten Sprenger is an educational editor, author and publisher. He is currently working on Slim3 Online, understandable information on web search and the use of online information for school, study or work. A version for primary education is also available.

Search Literacy & Online Children’s Information

Maarten published two books ‘Smart Search on the Internet’ (Dutch: Slim Zoeken op internet) for children aged 8-14 (2013/2018) and develops a framework for search literacy as part of digital literacy. In 2022, when a new edition was ready, he decided to put all content online publicly, as print no longer felt adequate. That’s where you have landed now.

From 2019 to 2024, Maarten advised on search literacy in the Actualisation of the new national Key Objectives (Actualisatie van de nieuwe Kerndoelen), for the subjects Dutch and Digital Literacy.

Maarten was Lead Content Curation at Wizenoze from 2015-2021 and worked as a coordinating editor at children’s book publisher Schoolsupport. Maarten gives workshops and lectures in education (PO, VO, MBO and HBO) and for libraries.

Since 2002 Maarten has worked in primary education, as a teacher and as an entrepreneur. Formerly he has been a professor at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and he organized art projects (television and new media). In 2006 he started the 8-12.info search engine.

Together with Carsten Schnober, Maarten Sprenger investigated for Slim Zoeken the quality and usability of the first ten search results in Google for 100 searches by primary school students. We have manually annotated the search results to evaluate the quality and suitability of web search results for a specific audience. The presented approach provides real-world insights into the web as seen through the eyes of Dutch children, and introduces a method that can be applied to various cases. See github.com/SlimZoeken/100queries.

Contact

Maarten Sprenger mail [-a-t-] slimzoeken.nu
Linkedin.com/in/msprenger

Publications in English

Children’s Information – Who cares? – A participatory observation and literature review of best practices from the field of information literacy and educational information retrieval by children aged 8 to 12 years. Published on the blog of Society of the Query.