It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
Dec
4
Written by:
12/4/2009 12:39 AM
Finding information online is easy. You go to a search engine, type in what you are looking for and with a few mouse clicks you have an answer...most of the time. Teaching kids how to search is easy. Teaching them how to do quailty search is a bit of a challenge but not impossible. When I was in the classroom, one of the hardest things to teach was organizing information found on the web in such a way that it was easy to see and garnish what was needed.
One
June 3, Google unveiled, quietly, what they say is the next "big-thing"
in search. Google Squared changes the way you look at information on the web. But what is it? Why is it so good and why do I think it will
change the way students conduct research online.
First, Google
Squared is a search engine. It works just like the regular ol' Google Search you turn to. Type
in a search term and you are presented with results. What is different
is how the results are presented and what you can do with the data.
For
this review I am going to use the search term "British Prime
Ministers." When you do a regular Google Search you get what you
expect, several sites that contains lists of British PM's. Students
would then have to work through each of the links, trying to find the
information, not knowing how that information is going to be organized
on each resulting page.
With Google Squared the search results
are presented in a table. Results are organized horizontally with
several pieces of information (or what Google calls Attributes.) In the
case of the British PM's you get the name, picture, description, date
of birth, religion and who they were proceeded by. All of the results
in each of those columns comes from different places on the web,
organized in the Squares. You can check the information for each Result
and Attribute but clicking the link in the Square. (Remember, its
always a good idea to double check where the information is coming
from.)
So
how could this be of benefit for students. Lets say I want my students
to research British PM's and I don't want them to know the religion,
rather, I want them to know the date of death and political party.
Again, these could all be separate searches on multiple pages, taking
lots of time. In the Square you can designate what Attributes you want
displayed. There are suggestions for Attributes or you can type your
own. In the case of date of death, that is a suggestion. However,
political party is not. So I type it in and am presented with the
political parties for all the British PM's.
Do
you not like one of the search results, or do not need one of the
search results? Press the X and it goes away. So basically your search
results are customized for your needs or what you want your students
need.
Try some of these cool searches:
Baseball TeamsTypes of DogsElementsRoller CoastersThese
are just some examples of how you could use Google Squared. Remember,
this product is still a baby, so there are going to be mistakes or
search results that just don't fit. But I am sure, just as other Google
products, it will get better. So, head on over to Google Squared and
give it a try!
21 comment(s) so far...
It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I was working with Google squared and discovered that the images come with an imbedded location as the image is now a hyperlink, which in one way is cool in that you are giving credit where credit is due. However depending on the image, a cute critter, clicking can take students to inappropriate sites. Be careful.
By Jude Kesl on
12/8/2009 9:27 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
A friend shared GS with the ITRT the other day. It is a really nice tool to use with student.
By Laura Burdick on
12/9/2009 2:29 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I love that GoogleSquared immeditely coverts results into a Spreadsheet to allow sorting and comparison.
However, The sample search I did for "World's Longest Rivers" omitted the Nile--something I hope Google will fix soon. It's a neat tool, but as these tools become easier to use, it becomes more and more important to teach our students to think critically about their searches and compare results from multiple sources.
This one might be good to teach alongside the "computational knowledge engine" at WolframAlpha.com
By Sean Fullerton on
12/15/2009 6:19 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
An excellent tool for educators who are skeptical about the basic google search! Great information.
By Christina on
7/20/2010 2:03 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
Definitely has the potential to be worthwhile, but there were certain keywords that did not come up with the results I was looking for. Still needs more time to perfect it.
By Jeannine Salman on
7/27/2010 3:12 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
As a librarian, I like that Google squared moves students away from the traditional Google search that they only know and care about.
By LoriM on
7/15/2010 4:39 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
As a librarian, any way to promote the ease of a valuable search is a good thing. I'm still wary of the legitimacy of the links that come up. I will explore it further & reserve judgement until then.
By Susan AL/ TC of West on
7/26/2010 2:09 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This seems great for students in the classroom. Searching through lists of websites can be difficult. It does not help that wikipedia is always the first link to appear. I think this definitely will be more helpful to students...
By Stephanie C on
7/27/2010 3:21 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I think this is a great idea. A lot of students get frustrated with all the results that pop up when they are trying to research. As a result of their frustration, they tend to pick the first few links and use whatever information is on them whether it is good, bad, relevant, etc. I would love to try this out in my classroom because I would be interested to hear feedback from my students.
By Juliane D on
7/28/2010 5:48 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This looks really cool. It seems to really break down what you are searching for. I think it does have some issues to work out, but I will be using it and look forward to the changes made to it!
By Lori Senior on
7/24/2010 3:31 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
What a great feature! I love how the information is presented. It makes it so much easier to synthesize lots of little pieces of information.
By Danielle Colasante on
7/20/2010 3:54 PM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This is an especially useful tool for elementary school students, for whom simply "Googling" often yields too many results to successfully navigate. This will allow teachers to help students to more effectively conduct research on a given topic (and in turn afford teachers the opportunity to spend even more time focusing on what to do with the research vs. on helping students more appropriately focus their attention during research).
By Dana on
7/25/2010 10:51 PM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I think this has great potential but it isn't quite there yet. Some of my searches either didn't have tables or had irrelevant information. Great in theory, though.
By Nancy Brown on
7/24/2010 3:13 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I like how the search results are given to you in a table. I think it is visually more appealing and easier to find the specific information you need.
By mmero on
7/31/2010 9:07 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This seems like a really interesting new step for Google, but as an educator I still have concerns about the "dumbing" down of our students through internet searches. I am a Luddite by no means, I just feel that our kids are using less brainpower with unknown long-term consequences at this point. Check out the article "Is Google Making Us stupid?" that appeared in the Atlantic a couple of years ago. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/
By Greg Smith on
4/23/2010 12:29 PM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
As a math teacher, I often hear from students that they couldn't find help on a given topic using the internet. One typical "problem" type that comes to mind is the "work" problem. If a student does a search, they often find a bunch of sites regarding workplace issues or even with the keywords "math" or "algebra" there are many other things that could come up. Once I put "work problem" into the first square, an improperly matched cartoon image came up, but under "description" I found exactly what I was looking for (it was here that I was planning to type more). I think that this can be a very powerful tool for students (and myself).
By Rishana on
4/27/2010 11:56 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This seems much more suitable to the classroom than the regular google search. This seems more "academic" and streamlined. As it states, this may change the way students do research! And it's all just beginning.
By Marni Meyer on
4/27/2010 12:40 PM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
This is a very interesting tool that has a tremendous amount of potential. I can see how this helps people organize information in a visual way that makes comparison easy. I cannot wait until the control over adding our own column becomes even more powerful (e.g., I wanted to add a column for 1st basemen to the baseball search, but it didn't work); when that happens, this site will be a real academic tool.
By Peter on
4/23/2010 2:48 PM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I like how the information is visually displayed, it is much easier to find websites than reading through long lists. However, I wasn't pleased in some of the websites that I was connected to. I found that the traditional Google search provided more relevant sites.
By Angela Langston on
4/26/2010 5:14 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
I think the way it's organized and having a picture there makes it easier for kids to retreive information. It's very user friendly and I like that you can search additional attributes.
By Debbie on
7/16/2010 7:22 AM
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It's Google, but Squared! -By Steven W. Anderson
Google Squared seems to be a step in the right direction for student research. I feel that this will give students the ability to access appropriate information in a more organized way. I am eager to show this search engine to my students!
By Jamie Lund on
7/17/2010 12:10 AM
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