Presentation given at the Midwest Educational Technology Conference on Tuesday, February 12, 2013

1. Beyond Search
Lucy Gray • METC 2013
http://www.lucygray.org
1

5. Google’s Mission
Online content
Billions of web pages
Offline content
Billions of items becoming
indexed
To organize the world’s information
and make it universally accessible
and useful.

6. A New Digital Divide
• Those who know how to “think” about search
vs. those don’t.
• Those who know how to validate soft
information vs. those don’t.
• Those who know where to find information in
new “hot” channels vs. those don’t.
• Those who understand the current culture of
informal languages vs. those don’t

7. A New Digital Divide
• Those who know how to get information to
travel to them vs. those who still chase it.
• Those who have the knowledge and skills to
create and re-mix digital media vs. those who
don’t.
• Those that understand that learning is a
continual process vs. those that view learning
as achievement.
-Helen Blowers, Columbus Metropolitan Library

8. Guiding Thoughts
• Search is the essential 21st century skill.
• The responsibility of teaching search to
kids lies within the entire school
community.
• How can educators help students to
organize, access, and leverage their
collection of information in useful ways?

9. Did You Know?
Parisian Love Story

10. What’s Your Search Story?
http://www.youtube.com/user/SearchStories

11. Inside Web Search
11

12. Tips & Tricks
12

13. Features: Search App
13

14. Features: Handwrite
14

15. Features: Knowledge Graph
15

16. Search Stories
16

17. Playground
17

18. Playground: A Google A Day
18

19. Blog
19

20. Help
20

21. Search Education Hub
21

22. Lesson Plans & Activities
22

23. Lesson Plans & Activities
23

24. Lesson Plans & Activities
24

25. Power Searching Classes
25

26. Dan Russell

27. Control + F

28. Organizing a Search
What is it I’m looking for?
(think about common keywords)
How would someone else talk about it?
(what words would they use? how would THEY describe it?)
Which of those terms would be most common?
Which of those terms would be very specialized to this topic?
What kind of thing would make me happy?
(do I want a single web page, a definition, a collection, an image.... or … ?)
28

29. Keyword Choice
Think about what you are trying to find
Choose words that you think will appear on the page
Put yourself in the mindset of the author of those words
Use synonyms
Start broad and use just a few words, then go deep
Use contextual terms
29

30. Other Search Tips
Use specifiers
Example: [Missouri population wikipedia]
Try an image search when normal means fail, you might find
something that will be useful or spark your interest in a different way.
Word order matters—when it’s not working one way, try another.
When searching for common phrases, don’t leave out the “stop
words.” (e.g., [ Little House on the Prairie] )
Use double quotes to find a particular sequence of words
Example: “Daniel M Russell” or “Harry S Truman”
30

31. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/search/

32. Search Tools
32
Search Options
News
Scholar
Books

33. Keep in Mind
Everything is searchable.
Control + F is incredibly useful.
Nothing stays constant on the web.
Advanced Search and Preferences are
available with each product.
RSS feeds are usually also available.
Just about every product has a team
blog.
33

34. Search Options
and
Search Tools

36. Web

37. Search
Tools

38. Images

44. Maps

45. Shopping

46. Video

47. News

48. Places

49. Blogs

50. Flights

52. Discussions

53. Recipes

54. Applications

56. Patents

57. Try Search Features
education resources k12
science fair volcanoes
Garageband tutorials
weather St. Louis MO
St. Louis Blues
DIS, KO or PEP
earthquake
sunrise St. Louis MO
Samuel Clemens was
born in *
2000 dollars in pesos
St. Louis MO
57

58. News

66. Try Google News
Go to http://news.google.com
Type in a search term.
Click on Advanced Search.
Restrict your search to a particular news source.
Set up a Google News alert for your school. Do a search for your
school’s name and look for the Google Alert link at the bottom of the
page.
66

67. Scholar

83. Try Google Scholar
Go to http://scholar.google.com
Enter a search term such as John Dewey, Brown vs. Board of
Education, or NASA and see what you can find.
Customize your results. For instance, see if you can select Missouri
courts and search for using a term of your choice.
Do another search using the keyword mobile.
Click on Advanced Scholar Search.
Narrow your results by entering “Learning and Leading with Technology”
in the publication field.
83

84. Book Search

96. Try Google Book Search
Do a search for the following authors, pick a title, and click on About This Book:
Harry S. Truman
T. S. Eliot
Langston Hughes
Patricia McKissack
Maya Angelou
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Make sure you are logged into your Google account and search for your favorite
books. Create shelves and add books to your shelves. You can link to your My
Library to share your collections with others.
96

97. Help & Resources
• Google Inside Search
• Google Search Basics
• Google Guide Quick Reference
• Google in Education Diigo Group

98. Conclusion
• Plan on learning new skills.
• Nothing stays constant on the web.
• Search engines are continually improving.
• New search tools are always being developed
• Make research to be a part of everything that you do in the
classroom. Teach and model this attitude to your students.
• Help students and colleagues develop a research stance
across content areas using News, Scholar, and Book Search.
• Encourage your school or district to adopt search tools and
strategies globally.