Written by:
11/20/2009 11:52 PM 

Cross posted at ThumannResources.com

There are so many search tools available in Google that this past August when I presented at the Google Teacher Academy in Boulder, Colorado, I named my presentation “Google Search: At A Mile A Minute”. I spoke as fast as I could and showed as much as I could in the 30 minutes I was allotted.

But, I have to tell you that it’s tough to stay on top of all the options that Google comes out with for Search. It is worth the effort though.

Friday,  at the monthly NJECC meeting, Samantha Morra, Sarah Rolle, Liz Bagish and I will presented part 1 of a 2 part series on Google Apps to our organization. We are all Google Certified Teachers, so we divided up the topics we wanted to cover and I chose Google Search.

This is the list of Search features I demonstrated and why I chose them specifically. (Bear in mind that I only have about 25 minutes.)

Google Show Options – We’ll be talking about addressing all learners and looking at information in different formats.

Wonder Wheel

Timeline

Also along these lines we’ll look at Google Squared.

I also wanted the group to know that their schools can import their entire libraries into Google Books and what information they can see about each book there. I talked about how you can export a list of ISBN numbers for your entire school library into the Google Books library in order to see (in digital format from anywhere) the following:

1. Table of Contents
2. Searching the Book
3. Popular Passages
4. Book Reviews
5. References from other Books
6. References from Scholarly Works

This led nicely into Scholar Search which we touched on briefly. (Well, everything was brief, right?)

We talked about how Google Scholar searches:

• Reputable articles
• Journals
• Books

We’ll also made clear that Google Scholar does not search:

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Blogs
• Popular websites

I wanted to show the NEW Google Image Swirl and showed everyone some advanced Image Search strategies including Similar Images, usage rights and searching by color, picture size and style.

We looked at Insights for Search and what the trending topics were for New Jersey for the last 30 days. We talked about how students can compare this information to other parts of the U.S. and other countries.

The last search strategy that we covered was how to make the news come to them. I will demonstrate to benefit of Google Alerts and suggested using it for your school, district, people you know (like relatives), yourself and topics you are interested in.

My hope was that everyone was able to learn a few new search techniques. Everyone has their own style, so not every tool I show them will necessarily meet their needs or the needs of the students in their classrooms. And I know I’m leaving so many great search tools out. But I only had 25 minutes.

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