Search Tools Your Students (And You?) Are Probably Overlooking
AI search tools like ChatGPT infused into Bing and Google’s Bard are getting a lot of attention right now. But when it’s time to search most students still default to Google.com. Unfortunately, by relying on just Google.com and trendy AI search tools students are missing out on a lot of excellent excellent and helpful material. […]
Seven Google Scholar Features You Should Know How to Use
In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I made the case for using Google Scholar as part of your research process. In the newsletter I included a short video overview of Google Scholar features you should know how to use. That video is embedded below. Video – Google Scholar Features You Should Know How to […]
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 […]
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 […]
Birds, Fish, and a Search Tip for Science Students
Some of you may recall from my posts earlier this year that my family and I have a lot of birds that nest around our house. We put out lots of bird feeders and hanging plants which attract all kinds of birds. Some of our favorites are Orioles and Yellow Finches. Recently, I learned that […]
How to Set Google Scholar Alerts – Two Options
I’ve published a few posts about Google Scholar lately because I think it’s a valuable research tool that students often overlook or haven’t been introduced to. It can be used to conduct research on court cases, inventions and inventors, and all kinds of academic topics. There’s one more feature of Google Scholar that students should […]
How to Use Google Scholar to Find Federal and State Court Rulings
Earlier this week I wrote about and published a video about how to use Google Scholar to research inventions and their inventors. Case law research is a third aspect of Google Scholar that can be helpful to student researchers. The case law search function in Google Scholar enables you to find Federal and state cases […]
How to Use Google Scholar to Learn About Inventions and Inventors
Last week I published a blog post outlining five things that students should know about using Google Scholar. One of those things is the option to search for U.S. Patent Office filings. When you locate a patent filing through Google Scholar you can read the details of the patent application, look at drawings that accompany […]
Patent Search and Five Other Google Scholar Features Students Should Know How to Use
Unlike search results on Google.com, Google Scholar search results isn’t a ranking of websites. Instead, Google Scholar search results are lists of scholarly articles related to your query. Google Scholar can also be used to locate United States patent filings as well as state and federal court cases. When looking at Google Scholar search results […]
Tracing the Evolution of Telephones – A Search Challenge for Students
Every year on March 7th the National Archives Daily Document features Alexander Graham Bell’s drawing for his telephone patent. Take a look at that drawing and you might start wondering, like I did a few years ago, about how many changes and improvements to that design have been made since 1876. The patent search option […]
Internet Archive Scholar – An Academic Version of the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive warehouses all kinds of fantastic materials (and some not-so-fantastic) that can be useful to teachers and students. The trouble with it is the organization is a little clunky for research purposes. Even if you limit the scope of your search to webpages and text you can still spend a lot of time […]
Tracing the Evolution of Phones – A Google Scholar Practice Activity
Google Scholar can be an excellent place to find articles from academic journals. Articles from academic journals aren’t the only things that students can search for on Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides search tools for locating court decisions and tools for locating patent filings. A good way for students to practice using the patent search […]
A Handy Google Scholar Search Refinement Tool
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m working on book. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research for the book through Google Scholar. One of the things that I have been researching is studies on students’ search behaviors. As this is topic that changes over time, I have been using the date […]
Trace the Evolution of Phones – A Search Challenge for Students
A couple of days ago Alexander Graham Bell’s drawing for his telephone patents was the featured document in the Today’s Document feed from the National Archives. Take a look at that drawing and you might start wondering, like I did, about how many changes and improvements to that design have been made since 1876. The […]
How to Use Google Scholar to Track Product Developments
Last week I wrote about how students can use Google Scholar to track product developments and innovations over time. In the video embedded below I provide more details on how students can use Google Scholar and Google Patents to trace the history of a product’s development. We’ll cover topics like this one and many more […]
Trace Product Developments Through Google Scholar Patent Search
Last week I was on Facebook chatting with an old friend about an older friend of ours who passed away almost a decade ago now. His name was Steve Gibbs and he owned a successful business that manufactured archery products. Steve’s company sponsored me when I was attempting to make the 2000 U.S. Olympic Archery […]