Five Google Search Products Students Overlook
The advanced search menu on Google.com offers some great search results refinement tools that students should know how to use. Once students have become familiar with those tools, they should start exploring some of the other search products that Google offers that aren’t found by just searching on Google.com. In this new compilation video I […]
Google Search Tools Students Often Overlook
The default action for students to take when given a research task is to turn to Google. Unfortunately, many students won’t venture much beyond the first couple of pages of Google.com results pages before declaring, “I can’t find anything about this.” But as Dan Russell reminds us in The Joy of Search, good search often […]
My Three Favorite Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of teaching computer science and doing some corporate training. It’s teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. I’ve also been using Google Workspace tools with students (previously G Suite, previously Google Apps, previously Google […]
How to Use Google Books
Google Books is one of my favorite search tools. Unfortunately, students often overlook it as a research tool unless they’ve been shown how it works. In this short video I provide a demonstrate of the key features of the current version of Google Books. In the video you’ll see how to: Search for a book. […]
11 Search Tips and Tools for Teachers and Students
As some of you have noticed, I wrote quite a bit about search tools and search strategies in July and early August. What you saw in those posts were excerpts from two projects that I’ve been working on. The first was The Practical Ed Tech Handbook (available to subscribers to my newsletter). The second is […]
Add Google’s Ngram Viewer to Your List of Research Tools
Google’s Ngram Viewer is a search tool that students can use to explore the use of words and names in books published between 1800 and 2019. The Ngram Viewer shows users a graph illustrating the first appearance of a word or name in literature and the frequency with which that word or name appears in […]
Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books
Last week I wrote an explanation of why Google Books can be a helpful research tool for history students. In short, it helps students locate and search inside books without having to track down a physical copy of each book that they are interested in reading. If students do want a physical copy of a […]
Using Google Books in History Classes
As the name implies, Google Books is a search engine for locating books. Through Google Books you’ll find books that you can read in their entirety for free and books that you can preview for free. Most importantly, Google Books lets you search for keywords within books. Searches on Google Books can be refined according […]
How to Share Books in Google Classroom and Google Sites
One of my favorite features of Google Books is the option to clip sections of free ebooks to share with students. It’s also possible to share with your students an entire ebook from Google Books. You can then use those clips or full books to spark discussions in Google Classroom. Another way to use the […]
Two Ways to Find Free Ebooks to Download
Every day I’m hearing from teachers who can’t get back into their classrooms because their school buildings are completely closed. My own school building has very limited access and only by administrative approval right now. These kind of closures have left some teachers searching for online alternatives to the books, particularly free reading time books, […]
How to Embed Books Into Your Blog
Google Books is one of my favorite tools for research. It’s also a great place to find all kinds of free books that you can read online and or download to read offline. Google Books also provides tools for embedding free books into your blog posts and webpages. These tools are available in both the […]
Google Arts & Culture Presents “From a Picture to 1000 Stories”
Google Books turned 15 this week. To mark the occasion Google released an interactive book titled From a Picture to 1000 Stories. The interactive book is a part of the Google Arts & Culture Institute. In From a Picture to 1000 Stories readers learn some fun facts about famous authors and their works. On the […]
My Top 5 Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of special education and corporate training thrown in for good measure. It’s teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. That’s why I always get excited when readers send me questions like the one I […]
Six Google Product Updates Made in May Impacting Teachers and Students
Google is constantly making updates to the services that they offer. Some of the updates are only affect the administrative side of G Suite for Education. I rarely write about those updates. Then there are updates that have a direct impact on teachers and students. Those are the ones that I usually write about. Here […]
How to Use the New Version of Google Books
On Monday I published a list of my ten go-to tech tools for social studies teachers and students. Google Books was one of the tools that I included in that list. Recently, Google Books got an updated user interface. The new interface includes some handy features including an option to quickly locate libraries near you […]
Ten Great Tech Tools for Social Studies Lessons
Over the last decade I’ve written about a lot of excellent resources for social studies lessons. Over time some of those tools have faded away and others have moved to the forefront of my top recommendations. Here’s my current list of ten top tools for social studies lessons. Timeline JS Timeline projects as as old […]
This Chrome Extension Helps You Find Books to Borrow
Library Extension is a free Chrome extension that will show you local library listings for the books that you viewing on Amazon, Google Books, Barnes & Noble, and other popular book retailer websites. Library Extension currently shows listings from more than 4,000 public library databases in the United States, Canada, UK, New Zealand and Australia. […]
How to Organize Shelves in Google Books
Creating bookshelves in Google Books is a great way to organize a selection of books around a topic that your students are studying. Think of creating Google Books bookshelves as a way of building reading lists for students. In the video below I demonstrate how to make bookshelves in Google Books.
Google Books Ngram Viewer Overview
The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a search tool that displays when and how often a term appears in books indexed by Google Books. By using the Ngram Viewer you can discover when a term starts to appear in literature, how often a term appears, and when a term loses popularity in literature. In the […]
A Guide to Google Books for Students & Teachers – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at the end of each day, I’m taking this time to feature some of the most popular posts and new tools of the 2015-2016 school year. Google Books is one of […]
How to Clip & Share Sections of Google Books
Earlier this week at the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas I ran a short workshop about Google Books. One of the things that we did in that session was clip and share sections of free Google ebooks. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to clip and share sections of free Google ebooks. Applications […]
Google Books for Teachers and Students – A Guide
Google Books is one of my favorite research tools that students and teachers often overlook. In a post earlier today I embedded a book that I found through a Google Books search. Google Books allows you to do that with books that are in the public domain. I have done that a lot over the […]