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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Infographic with Google Search Tips

Google is a very powerful search engine, but the way you search makes a huge difference in your results. The infographic below has some great tips on becoming a Google Search Power User. Check it out and share with your students.

Google for Education Resources: http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/google-for-educators_22.html 

Tips for More Effective Google Searches

ZDNET has a great article with 10 Google Search Secrets that can help you and your students search more effectively and efficiently.

Knowing how to do effective internet searches is a very important skill for all of us to have, so share these resources with your students and help them learn this valuable skill.

Google - free posters with search tips for teachers

Google for Educators - Resources for using Google in school

Tips on better searches on Google, from Google

Infographic on better searches using Google

10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have

Google Sets - Automatically create sets of items from a few examples

Google Sets is a very cool service from Google that allows you to create a list of terms/examples and then it will search for related items based on the "set" you entered.

This is useful for finding related items and students can use it to see relationships among items.

I also learned from Lifehacker that it is a great way to find alternatives to software/apps. Enter a couple of apps/software you are looking for an alternative too and then see what Google Sets comes back with.

(Lifehacker is a great resource in itself).

Try out Google Sets and have some fun. See my example below.

Google Search Guide

The Google Search Guide Cheat Sheet is a great resource for students, teachers, and others. It gives you a one page resource showing you all the different ways to search for things using Google, including using Google to find definitions and do calculations.

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.