An Overview of Microsoft’s Search Coach
Last summer Microsoft announced a new Teams product that would be rolling to education users over the coming school year. That product is called Search Coach and it appears to now be widely available to all Microsoft Teams education users. As its name implies, Search Coach in Microsoft Teams provides students with tips to improve […]
Why You Should Try Refining Search Results According to Domain
Refining Google search results according to site or domain can be a fantastic way for teachers and students to locate websites that they might not otherwise find but still contain useful information. This is because, as we know, a website can have excellent information about a topic but not rank well in Google search results. […]
“Whoa!” – This Is Why We Should Review Search Strategies Every Year
During last week’s episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff I shared a little story from earlier that day in my classroom. The story provides a good reminder of why we should review search strategies every fall even if we think our students “have done it before.” Here’s the […]
Five Search Tools Students Often Overlook
In our new remote teaching and learning environments students may find themselves having to look things up online more than ever before. Even if you’re hosting online class meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams there will still be lots of time when students need to do some research on their own. This is […]
A Five Minute Explanation of How Google Search Works
Last week Google published a new video that explains how Google Search works. The video presents an explanation of the factors that contribute to why some pages rank higher in the results page than others. The video also explains the factors that can contribute to a change in the ranking of a webpage. Applications for […]
How Vocabulary Lists Help Students Conduct Better Searches
Can you identify this mushroomfound in the forest near my housein Maine? In chapter five of The Joy of Search Daniel Russell explains the process he used to determine whether or not a plant that he found was poisonous. When I read that chapter a couple of weeks ago I was struck with the reminder that […]
Ruff Ruffman Presents Lessons on Search and Advertising for K-2 Students
Ruff Ruffman is the “star” of a PBS Kids series. Yesterday, one of my high school students asked me if my kids watch the show. My daughters are still a little too young for it. But the question did remind me of a couple of little PBS Kids lessons about web search and online advertising […]
My Approach to Creating Search Practice Activities for Students
This week’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week Newsletter featured ten Google search tips for students. It’s all well and good to give those tips to students and show them how to use them, but for the tips to really sink in students should get some practice using them. To that end, you can […]
Search Strategies Students Need to Know Now – Webinar This Thursday
The beginning of the new school year is a great time to introduce students to some new search strategies and to give them refreshers on techniques they may have forgotten about during the summer. That is why this Thursday at 4pm ET I’m hosting an updated version of my popular Search Strategies Students Need to […]
The Joy of Search – Get a Sample Chapter and Learn a Great Search Strategy
The Joy of Search is the title of Dan Russell’s forthcoming book about search strategies. I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon about six weeks ago and am eagerly anticipating its arrival this fall. Dan Russell’s official title is Senior Research Scientist for Search Quality and User Happiness at Google. What he does that you, I, […]
Building Image-based Search Challenges
On Monday I wrote about a couple of image-based search challenges that I do with students. I use those challenges as a way to get students to think about all of the search tools and search strategies that they have at their disposal. To solve the challenges students need to combine strategies and tools. I […]
Ten Search Strategies Students Should Try
Students often think that because they can type a phrase into Google or saying something aloud to Siri they know how to search. Of course, any teacher who has heard a student say “Google has nothing on this” or “there’s no information about my topic” knows that students don’t inherently know how to search despite […]
A Pre-search Checklist for Students
Last week I published two blog posts (here and here)in which I referenced having students make lists before they begin in-depth web research. A couple of readers have emailed me asking if I can give an example of the pre-search checklists that I mentioned in those posts. It’s not anything fancy, but I do have […]
Three Types of Web Search – And a Strategy for Conquering the Difficult One
In A Taxonomy of Web Search Andrei Broder, a noted scholar in the field of web search, classified web search into three categories. Those being navigational, informational, and transactional. When Broder was writing in 2002 navigational referred to a quest to immediately reach a particular website. Today, thanks to services like Google Maps, navigational search […]
Have Students Make Lists Before Starting Web Search
This is an excerpt from a book that I have been working on for the last fifteen months. I’m getting close to finishing it. Our students have become accustomed to entering a search into Google as soon as they are confronted by a question to which they don’t have an answer on the tips of […]
Quickly Summarize Long Articles With SummarizeThis
SummarizeThis is a free tool that will quickly create a summary of long passages of text. To use SummarizeThis you just copy and paste text into the summary box and click “summarize.” A summary of the text then appears above the original text that you copied. Applications for Education I included SummarizeThis in my recent […]
Three Search Tools Students Often Overlook
Google is the default search engine for many students. In fact, if your students have Chromebooks and the school has set Google as the default search engine, they may not even realize that there are search engines other than Google. Here are three search tools that students often overlook. Bing Sure this seems obvious and […]
Longer and Better Searches – Strategies Students Need to Know
Too often our students don’t get beyond the first few pages of search results before declaring, “Google has nothing about this!” Why? Because the average time spent on a search is just 1 minute! And the average search term only has three words!* Next week I am hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar that will […]
Search Strategies and a Webinar FAQ
On Wednesday at 4pm Eastern Time I’m hosting a webinar called Search Strategies Students Need to Know. Over the weekend I had a few people ask me what the technical requirements are for joining the webinar. The webinars that I host only require you to have a modern web browser installed on your computer. I […]
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 […]
Search Strategies for Students – Webinar Recording
Yesterday afternoon I hosted a free webinar, sponsored by Choosito, all about search strategies that all students can employ. The webinar was recorded for people who couldn’t attend live (I realize that 4pm Eastern Time isn’t the most convenient time for teachers). The recording is now available for everyone to watch. The video is embedded […]
My Favorite Internet Search Tips for Teachers & Students
Whether you teach students who are ten years old or forty years old there will be times when they turn to you and say, “I can’t find anything about this” while they are researching. In most cases the problem isn’t that the Internet doesn’t hold any information for them. Rather, the problem is that students […]
How to Use Choosito’s Reading Level-indexed Search Tool for Free
On Wednesday I published a post about Choosito that spurred a lot of questions in email and comments on Facebook including some not-so-pleasant comments that I deleted. Choosito is a search engine that offers a reading level index for results. You have to register on Choosito even if you just want to use their free […]