Educational Technology: google search tips

Showing posts with label google search tips. Show all posts

Excellent Google Search Tip to Use with Kids

November, 2014
One of the powerful features I like about Google is Safe Search. SafeSearch can help you block inappropriate or explicit images from your Google Search results. The SafeSearch filter isn’t 100% accurate, but it helps you avoid most adult content.

YouTube also has a similar functionality called YouTube Safety Mode. This is an opt-in setting available on the computer and mobile site that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube. You can think of this as a parental control setting for YouTube.

Here is how to turn SafeSearch on or off

Visit the Search Settings page.
Find the "SafeSearch filters" section.
Turn on SafeSearch by checking the box beside "Filter explicit results." When SafeSearch is on, sexually explicit video and images will be filtered from Google Search result pages, along with results that might link to explicit content.
Turn off SafeSearch by unchecking the box. When SafeSearch is off, we'll provide the most relevant results for your search and may include explicit content when you search for it.
Click Save button at the bottom of the page.

To prevent others from changing your setting, like your kids or anyone who is borrowing your computer, click Lock SafeSearch. Learn more about locking SafeSearch.

Check out Google help centre to learn more about Safe Search.

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A Handy Search Tip Students Should Know About

12:27 PM google search tips

October 31, 2014
Here is a pretty basic but very important search tip I want to bring to your attention today. Some of you might already be using it but I want you to share it with your students and help them search for information more efficiently. Using this search hack, students will be able to quickly find anything on a document, email or a webpage. This search tip involves the use of two keyboard buttons to bring up a small search box that will allow you to look for anything on the page you are on. Simply enter the word or phrase you want to look for and hit "enter". All the instances of that word will be highlighted in yellow. The combination for Mac users is "Command" + "F", and for Windows users "Control"+ "F".

This search hack has several uses : You can use it to look for key words in an article, search for a specific term within page, look for the name of an author or character in a passage , and pretty much anything else you want to look for in a web page. Students can also use this hack when conducting a query in a search engine. They can click on search results and do a quick search to see whether the page has the search phrases they are looking for. Pretty basic but time-saving.

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A Handy Google Search Cheat Sheet for Your Class

4:23 PM google search tips

October, 2014
An elemental part of the smart Googling we have talked about in a previous post relates to the use of a set of modifiers that, once included in a search query, makes it more focused and helps you get better and accurate search results. Google has assembled all of these nifty modifiers into this beautiful cheat sheet which is available for free download from the link below.

As I came across this resource I thought it might be a great material to share with students and help them be better searchers on Google. For each of the modifiers featured in this document, Google provides three types of explanations: it describes what it does, how to use it, and what results it will generate for you. For instance, if students want to get search results from a particular site, say, Wikipedia, they have to type their search query and adds to it the modifier site:followed by the URL of the website e.g wikipedia.com. The final query will look something like this : search query site:wikipedia.com.

Click on this link to download the full cheat sheet.

A Must See Poster Featuring 7 Google Search Tips for Students

9:07 PM google search tips

October, 2014
Here is one of my favourite Google search posters that is ideal for classroom use. In this free downloadable poster, students will get to learn about 7 important tips on how to conduct an efficient search query on Google. By efficient I mean a search query that is accurately worded and therefore has higher chances of returning relevant results. These tips are beautifully illustrated with different examples so students can easily understand how to apply them in their own search.

Now with the preponderance of 'information crap' and junk content, using Google smartly becomes a urgent skill that students need to master. It will not only help them save their time an energy while searching web but, more important, will enhance their learning experience by providing them with good quality content. Check out this resourceful page for more materials and resources to help you students be good Googlers.

Click here to access and download this poster.

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Anatomy of A Google Search

7:56 PM google search tips

October 3, 2014
It takes only a fraction of a second for Google search engine to fetch search results relevant to your query. But do you know what happens during this fraction of a second? Do you know how Google's search robots work to get you the results matching your query from within billions of web pages? Anatomy of a Search is a free downloadable one page PDF that explains how Google search works. I think this is a great material to use with students in class to teach them how Google search works.
Knowing the parameters Google draws on to rank web pages and select relevant content for search queries will definitely help students improve their search techniques and enable them to tap into its full potential. Download this short PDF and share it with your students. Enjoy.