Two infographics with tips for becoming a Power Google User!

Google is an excellent research and search tool, but there are some tips and features that a lot of people don't know about. These two inforgraphics have some great tips and information on getting more out of Google.

(click on image to view larger, or download and view)

 HackCollege.com 

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Wonder - new search tool with expert guidance for searching the web

Wonder is a new search tool that goes beyond just searching the internet. Wonder has built a research network of librarians and experienced researchers to help students search the web for high-quality sources, and to encourage curiosity in online learning.

You can sign in with Facebook, Twitter, or email and it's free to use.

When you search in Wonder, the results are contributed by librarians and other experts, filtering out a lot of the garbage that is online.

When you do a search, you get some results, a box to enter more information about what you are searching for, and a list of experts that you can choose to get results from.

This is a great resource for students and teachers, filtering out some of the chaff for search results and giving better results.

Below is an example search I did for "aircraft design":

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Gooru - the Search Engine for Learning

Gooru is a site I wrote about a while back when it was in Alpha status. It is now in Beta status and open for everyone to use.

Gooru describes itself as a "Search Engine for Learning". It is a study tool that allows students to explore resources and study guides that are aligned to standards. The materials are in math, social studeis and science and are from 5th grade up to high school. Resources include digital textbooks, videos, animations, links and much more. It also includes social media functions so that students can work, study, and share with others.There are ready made collections of resources, and users can create their own collections of resources as a study tool, or even as a class project.

There are self-assessments in Gooru that help it adapt to the student, suggesting resources and study guides based on the student's performance.

The resources are all vetted by educational professionals and you can even create custom collections and resources.

The site has resources to learn more about it and how it can be beneficial to educators and students.

Get Your PhD in Googling - interactive tool for learning better search tips

Google is a very powerful tool. You can find pretty much anything online these days. The trick is knowing how to find exactly what you are looking for.

Here is an interactive infographic with some great tips for better internet searching (specifically with Google).

UPDATED 11/14/13
It seems the animation is no longer available, so here are some other search resources and a couple of images from it:

http://www.missionimblogable.co.uk/2012/06/get-your-phd-in-googling.html

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/fa/ICTFalkirkPrimaries/2012/03/13/primary-research-skills-tools/





Related:

Google - free posters with search tips for teachers

Tips for More Effective Google Searches

Google Search Education - teach your students to search better

10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

Google for Education Resources - tips, apps, how-to's, getting started, lesson ideas, and more

Google Search Guide

Google Updates Chrome and adds Research in Docs

Google had  a busy beginning of the week, releasing three updates that are very useful.




1. Google Chrome Browser - version 19 released: Chrome 19 patches 20 vulnerabilities in the browser and supports tab synchronization. It already had support to sync your bookmarks, passwords, apps, and more across your account onto all copies of Chrome (including on Android) and now it also adds the ability to sync your open tabs across your account. This is handy when switching from one device to the other.




2. Google Docs gets built in search - do research as you work: In Google Docs, there is now a research pane where you can do a Google search directly from Google Docs. No need to open a new tab or leave your document. It is under the Tools menu. You can right click on a word in Docs that you want to learn more about also, or use the pane to search for anything you need. It will even automatically add a footnote citation for you!

This is a great resource for anyone doing research or writing a paper.

Related:

Google for Educators Resources

instaGrok - awesome education search, curation, and journal site

instaGrok is a interesting site I just learned about. instaGrok's tagline is "A New Way to Learn" and they define "grok (v): to understand thoroughly and intuitively".

instaGrok is a type of search engine that finds educational content and retrieves it in multiple formats, including web pages, images, videos and even forums. It filters out non-educational content and profanity, uses crowd sourcing to rate the quality of each search result, displays search results according to grade level difficulty, provides source notes, visualizes concepts in an interactive concept map, updates the concept map as you refine your topic. It also allows curation and tracking of your websites, concepts, student activities, and can generate multiple-choice questions from the search results. Students can use it to create editable research journals ("groks") and the groks will be populated with websites visited and the concepts covered. Teachers can review the students' groks and add comments.

Here's an instaGrok search for "Heat Capacity". The search results are shown in the concept map, and as you click on each circle, it opens up more results. The right side menu has key facts, websites, videos, images, quizzes, and concepts. In less than 5 seconds, I have an incredible amount of information and resources on heat capacity that I can use with my students. Students can quickly do searches and find relevant information and resources on any topic.

Here's a summary of features and results:

It's a very cool way to do research and curate and share the results. 


instaGrok: http://www.instagrok.com/

Quixey - search engine for apps

There are literally millions of apps out there for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Facebook,web apps, etc. How do you find what you want or need for the platform you are using?

Quixey is the answer. It is a search engine for finding apps. You enter a search for what you want to do, such as "take notes", "record messages", "detect lies", etc. and then it brings you back results.

The results are listed with the app logo, logos for what platforms it's available on, and a short description of the app. You can also click on the platform links on the left to narrow your search by platform. Under each app name is a link with the number of editions. Click on that and it opens up with a list of each platform, cost, link to the app, and user review ranking.

This is a great tool for educators and students to use when looking for apps. Enter what you want to do, and your are off. The sorting by platform makes it very useful, especially if you are looking for apps that work on more than one platform.

Infographic on better searches using Google

This is a great infographic that has been making the rounds on the internet. It shows some great tips on doing better (ie. more targeted) searches on Google. Share it with your students.

Created by: HackCollege

Google - free posters with search tips for teachers

Google has some great posters that teachers can download and print for free. These posters have tips and help for students when they do an internet search using Google to make their search more productive and effective.

These posters are a great resource for teachers and students. Check them out.

Google updates image search, goo.gl, and gmail with new features

Google has been busy this week with updates and new features to many of it's products and services. They updated Google Calendar's favicon to display the actual date instead of just "31", A Google A Day puzzle, and Google Docs received pagination and native printing. Now, there are three more updates from Google. These updates will be rolling out over the next few days. 


1. Google Recent Image Search - Google's image search has increased the speed of indexing of images and highlights recent results by showing a small label below the image with the date the image was posted online. This can help when searching for a timely or newsworthy topic and wanting to see the newest images. 




2. Goo.gl URL shortener gets new features - goo.gl is Google's URL shortening service. It has a lot of great features, described here, and just got some improvements. When you create a new short URL on the goo.gl site, the new URL text will be automatically highlighted to make it easier to copy to the clipboard. 

One of the cool features of goo.gl is the dashboard where you can see past url's you've shortened and how many times someone has clicked on that shortened url.  You can now remove items from the dashboard to only keep the ones you really want to track visible.

You can also now report goo.gl URLs that are for spam sites using goo.gl/spam-report. 




3. “Don’t forget Bob” and “Got the wrong Bob?” are two Gmail Labs features that help prevent you from forgetting to include someone on an email, and sending a message to the wrong person with a similar name to the person you meant to email — like emailing Bob (your boss) instead of Bob (your friend). 

As you type in your recipients, Gmail will automatically make suggestions based on the groups of people you email most often. When you see a suggestion to add a person you’ve forgotten, all you have to do is click on their name to add them.



Similarly, if you click on a suggestion to replace a mistakenly added recipient, the proverbial “wrong Bob” will be replaced by the right one.

All of these updates should make users of Google's products feel comfortable and reassured that Google will continue to support and improve the products that they've come to depend on. 




Reference: Official Google Blog (and images are from here also)


(I've written a lot about Google's apps. I do not get paid or compensated by Google for this. I have found their apps to be well designed and easy to use.)

Qwiki - search results as a multimedia presentation

Qwiki is a pretty cool site I learned about this past March at TeachMeetNJ. Qwicki works differently than regular search. Instead of coming back with links, it creates a multimedia presentation for your search term.

The result is a story, told with images, text, and audio about the subject you searched for. If you search for the term again, it will create a new story. There is a "film strip" on the bottom so you can skip ahead to other images.

You can sign up for free and save your Qwiki's for later viewing. You can also view other Qwiki's from other people on the site.

A Qwiki about Mount Rushmore starts out with a Google Map (which zooms in automatically) of where it is, describes what it is, shows pictures of it, talks about the history of it and who's on it, the size, scope of work, and more.

This is a nice way to create presentations and do research on topics. The format is interesting and can be used by both teachers and students. It's fun and creative. 

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Factbites: Where results make sense

Factbites is a new way to search the internet. It is described as "what happens when you combine a search engine with an encyclopedia".

It is definitely a different way to search for information. Instead of listing a bunch of web sites that have your search terms in them, it lists sentences and paragraphs from sites that are related to your search. The search results are also grouped by sites and related topics. Many of the sentences and paragraphs are a definition to your search term. This can be useful for just needing to quickly look something up.

There were some quirks to it. I typed in "electron" as a search and it changed the search to "electronics." When I searched for "Twitter" it had no results at all.

Here is a screenshot for a search for "pedagogy". You can see how the results are much different than a Google search. (Bing is blocked here at school because inappropriate content can be seen on the search results page of Bing, even if the referring site is blocked. This includes porn videos that will play in the search results page!)

I think that this is a good addition to different search engines and can be used to look up a definition or other information. It is still in Beta so it is not fully refined yet.

You could also use it to teach students about search engines and different ways to find information online.

Useful Search Engines for Science

Online Courses has a great listing of search engines for science. While Google is a great search engine, it will bring back lots of results unless you know how to tailor your search.

These search engines search for science resources and the site has them broken down by scientific area (biology, astronomy, etc.)

This is a great resource for teachers and students.

New Google Search Options

This week Google unveiled some new search features. These features add some increased usefulness to your search. 

The first thing you will notice when you do your search is "Search Options." By clicking on this, Google gives you a variety of options to enhance your search.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can quickly sort results by video, forum, or reviews. You can also sort by posting date, images only. The three new options I like are "Related Searches", "Wonder Wheel",  and "Timeline". 

Related Searches puts a listing of related search terms at the top of the page instead of at the bottom like the old setup.

Wonder Wheel displays a visual respresentation of related search items. Clicking on a term brings up a new wheel with new related search terms. This is a great idea for teachers to use with their students since we already usual visual representations and concept maps with our students.

Timeline will list your search results by publishing date. This can be useful when looking for older information or when trying to ensure that you are looking at timely posts.

Take a look at Google's new search options and try them out. For more information, click HERE.