Help Your Students Become Better Searchers
Happy Friday!
Our Elbert Innovates class (Teachers who are going through the Google Level 1 Certification) this past week had a great discussion about how our students access information through searches. In my experience in my 7th grade middle school classroom a few years ago I would take my students to the computer lab to do research and my Middle Schoolers often struggled with trying to filter through the amount of information a Google search would populate on their topic. For example, we would search "cells" and bring up a good zillion (I'm estimating here) links about cells. Some would be ads, some would be blogs, the top search would be a wikipedia article. .. etc. .. I'm sure you may have experienced this as well. My students had the technical knowledge to search but often would get stuck on finding the pertinent information they needed for their topic.
Google has created Search lesson lesson plans on how to teach our students to be better searchers. Did you know that you can filter your search? For example, you could search for news about cells that have been posted during the past week or month. You can search for pictures of cells and specify that the pictures be free use of copyright. You could search videos of cells and specify the duration of the videos. . . You could think about having your students find 3 websites to back up their claim. (Remember, for our students with reading deficits they could use Read and write for Google and listen to the article) When our students know how to be better searchers then our students are becoming better critical thinkers. Below is a great short video about searching within Google. Please let me know if you have questions.
Take Care,
Clint
Our Elbert Innovates class (Teachers who are going through the Google Level 1 Certification) this past week had a great discussion about how our students access information through searches. In my experience in my 7th grade middle school classroom a few years ago I would take my students to the computer lab to do research and my Middle Schoolers often struggled with trying to filter through the amount of information a Google search would populate on their topic. For example, we would search "cells" and bring up a good zillion (I'm estimating here) links about cells. Some would be ads, some would be blogs, the top search would be a wikipedia article. .. etc. .. I'm sure you may have experienced this as well. My students had the technical knowledge to search but often would get stuck on finding the pertinent information they needed for their topic.
Google has created Search lesson lesson plans on how to teach our students to be better searchers. Did you know that you can filter your search? For example, you could search for news about cells that have been posted during the past week or month. You can search for pictures of cells and specify that the pictures be free use of copyright. You could search videos of cells and specify the duration of the videos. . . You could think about having your students find 3 websites to back up their claim. (Remember, for our students with reading deficits they could use Read and write for Google and listen to the article) When our students know how to be better searchers then our students are becoming better critical thinkers. Below is a great short video about searching within Google. Please let me know if you have questions.
Take Care,
Clint
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