Go Beyond Search in Google

Google Is A Search Engine...

@LisaBerghoff

This time of year, many of us have our students doing research projects. How fortunate we are to live in a world where students have the whole internet at their disposal. I was explaining to my own children that when I was in school we used these things called encyclopedias! The internet is vast and being able to use your time efficiently to get valid information can be tricky. I'm happy to let you know that there are some specialized search tools set up by Google to help us sift through the never ending sea of information that is out there.

Here is a quick breakdown. You can find more on the Google Education Training Center. 

Google Maps: 

Starting with the obvious! Yes, you can find directions, addresses, and traffic information. Did you know that you can also search for key terms? For example, you can search "Historical Landmarks In Highland Park". You can then see ratings that other maps users have written.

Google Trends:

This tells you what is popular on the internet. My favorite part of this tool is the "data visualization project". The Google news lab is working with designers to tell visual stories with Google data. In addition, you can see trending searches, trending on YouTube, and top charts that you can filter by country, time, date, and category. This is a great tool if you ever do any kind of current events in your class. 

Google News:

Google News gets the latest news from around the world. It is curated from various news sources which you can personalize and adjust. It also can be filtered by category/subject. This is a great tool if your students are searching for news articles because it gives you just that, and no distracting YouTube videos that you would love to click on!

Google Books:

You can search the "world's most comprehensive index of full-text books". If you need students to reference part of a book that you don't happen to have, this is a great tool for you. Google Books will show you books for purchase as well as free online text. You can also create lists in the My Library section.

Google Finance:

Great tool for business and economics classes! You can track stock prices, create a portfolio, see the latest finance news.