Thirty-Four Interesting Ways* to Use Search Engines in the Classroom
by practicalowl
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License.
*and tips
#1 - Tag Galaxy Image Search For an alternative image search use Tag Galaxy. It provides search results from the tags added to Flickr images. It offers a student a visual representation of their results in the form of a photo sphere. Each tag belongs to a galaxy of related tags helping students find other content. @tombarrett
Esustain08 Tag Galaxy 1 by vivevans
#2 - Check expressions in MFL Go to http://www.google.fr/ or http://fr.yahoo.com/ type in your phrase check Pages: France (google) or français (yahoo) and type in your phrase. Thousands of results including Simple example · Rigolus - La newsletter du 16/09/2008 I wonder if the French say as Pourquoi le soleil, c'est du beau temps, et la pluie du ... Le coup de soleil, ça vous rend rouge comme un homard, puis vous pelez pendant deux semaines. ... red as a lobster when they www.rigolus.com/archives/2008_09_16.htm - En cache get sunburnt and good reading material Let’s type in Rouge homard soleil @kaymcmeekin
#3 - Boolean Search Made Easy A well constructed boolean A short and simple expanation search is the way to improve of boolean search logic is your search results. available on the Boolify Help page. Boolify helps students understand their web search by visually demonstrating the logic of their search. As students add or remove the jigsaw piece qualifiers ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’ the changes in their search results appear at the bottom of the search screen. @janning
#4 - Librarians do it by numbers Have you been to the library and found a book on your topic? Do you know its Dewey number? Visit BUBL to find websites catalogued by the Dewey Decimal System.
@janning
#5 - Kidsclick 'Kid-friendly' sites in a 'kid-friendly' directory. Check out the Worlds of Web Searching for lesson plans.
The new KidsClick site will be available soon. @janning
#6 - Quintura for Kids Quintura for Kids Grown-ups might like to check out Quintura's embeddable search results tag clouds - a great way to share results. @janning
#7 - Create Biographies Use http://www.123people.com/ and http://www.pipl.com/ to create valid and extensive searches for biographies.
@4goggas
#8 - Cooliris for image & video searches Cooliris is a free plugin for your web browser to turn searches into an interactive scrolling image wall. You can zoom in, out, left or right. It's great on a IWB - use the blue bar & arrows at the bottom of the screen. Choose to search Google images, Flickr, Youtube & more. @mrmackenzie
#9 - Google Wonder Wheel Encourage your students to see a regular Google search in a different way. From the standard results page, click "More Options" under the Google logo. Select "Wonder Wheel". Choosing different words from the wheel allows you to drill down into different combined searches too.
Image by Ivan Walsh
@tombarrett
#10 - Visuwords One of the most popular ways to search for synonyms in my class. Visuwords creates a word map of connections and word families from your search. A fluid and fantastic tool here are some more detailed ways to use it in the classroom. @tombarrett
#11 - Soungle - search engine for sound Could be useful as a stimulus for writing. 1. Create a story, mood, setting etc through sounds from soungle etc
2. Put the sounds into a medium such as PPT.
3. Add writing or 'talk' story
4. Perform out loud!
www.soungle.com
#12 - Google Timelines Generate a timeline of dated Google search results... A screenshot of the timeline could make for a nice mystery starter... Click on parts of the timeline to zoom into a specific time period.
#13 - Guess the search term Type in a search term into your favourite image search engine and view the thumbnails. Scroll down so you can't see the search term (or take a screenshot and crop) and show the class the thumbnails. They have to guess what you put in originally.
SHARING
This doesn't really work with Google as they show the word under each image so try bing.com @stuartridout
#14 - Calculator & Converter Google Tip: You can use Google for much more than searching. It is a quick way to perform calculations and conversions. My class find it more useful than looking for the calculator application or finding a conversion site as they can type straight into the Google search on the browser toolbar.
Try typing 3.8 * 27.4 16 oz in g 100 c in f 20 gbp in usd
@stuartridout
#15 - Use the Help & Tutorials Choose your search engine to suit your search needs Try the Noodle Tools Interactive version Look for links to support documents on the Search engine site. (often at the bottom of the page - and in small print ) An example: Google printable pdf posters @janning
#16 - Thumbshots Use Thumbshots ranking, compare how different search engines bring up different sites for the same keywords. The results show up differences and could lead to classroom discussions on reasons behind this commercial, popularity etc. Dianne McKenzie
by Matt Brett
#17 - Google for non-tech teachers This is a cheat sheet that can be laminated and hung near the class computer or pod. It is a guide that is colour coordinated for basic to advanced users. Use it as a treasure hunt resource for children and teachers to understand search operators. @glennmalcolm
download here: Google Cheat sheet
#18 - Safe search Kidzui This is a downloadable flashbased browser that must be verified by parents via email prior to pupil use. A class setup with one user name etc returns online activity to the teacher whenever they log in - time, URL, popularity etc. Built by teachers and parents only trusted sites/pages are allowed (including youtube pages - last count 2 million+) @glennmalcolm
download here: Kidzui
#19 - Search Cube search-cube is a visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, threedimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninetysix websites, videos and images. Flip the cube and use the visual interface to get discussion underway, especially for art and design topics. Use your keyboard arrows to flip, thenmthe cube, then Mouse over images for summaries!
http://www.search-cube.com/ @heyjudeonline
#20 - Spezify Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways. With a visual presentation of ideas, and links across the top of the page to help narrow down the search, students are able to learn about the impact of key words in searching immediately and visually. @heyjudeonline
http://www.spezify.com/
#21 - WolframAlpha WolframAlpha is a very powerful mathematical and data search engine. But you can get too much information output from it. So try these two very simple activities. 1) Try typing this in: “Where am I?” Then click on the map data to see! Discuss how it could “know that?” 2) Explore some simple AI with the search box “talk” to Wolfram Alpha – even simple questions asked differently get different responses! Try: Hello Who are you? How are you? What are you? Do you sleep? Who is your dad?
http://www.wolframalpha.com
Again – discuss how / why you get this output?
Wolfram Alpha has some other tools that can be used as a basis for interesting lessons. Click on the link below to see what the WolframAlpha Tones Generator can do in a cross curricular activity.
Remember keep questions VERY simple.
http://www.l4l.co.uk/?p=472 @eyebeams
#22 - WatchKnow (Video Search) http://www.watchknow.org/ WatchKnow is a collaborative, open project of educational videos designed to be searchable, reliable, and conductive to better learning for all. (Still in Beta)
@lismiss
#23 - Google Alerts This search tool was recently Learners could set up some alerts: described by Ollie Bray (LTS) as allowing people to search the future Prior to commencing a research web. Along with RSS, this changes project many conceptions of the web around to keep up-to-date on college/uni sifting what is already there. focus to track what is being written about Type in a term, choose a search type them and how often you wish to be notified to find out what is going on in their of new web content featuring your area term, and provide an email address as part of their computing/ICT studies to receive the intro to content and a to be better and more quickly link. informed. I use this to keep embedded delicious 'virtual libraries' updated on websites that I run eg ACTS. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and complete this form.
@parslad
#24 - eyePlorer Creative way for students to explore a new topic in a simple way •Type in topic to research •eyePlorer scans the web for facts and puts them into a colour wheel. •Click on eyeSpots for more facts related to topic -common facts are arranged in categories •Click on border to focus on one category
Students can drag and drop facts onto an eyePlorer notebook to save for later use.
@lismiss
#25 - Google Custom Search
If you want to focus your students' searching on http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ specific sites use this tool to build your own search Or even create a search engine engine. based on your websites and Additionally you can let students contribute and help build the sites available to be searched.
resources.
@itmadesimple
#26 - Making Google Custom Search Safe Putting a Google Custom Search on your blog or VLE can be useful: You can make it default to Safe Search and if you are a school you can remove the ads. You could also use it to build a themed search engine as described on the previous page to put on a topic page. It's simple: Link to instructions
Children with SEN can also benefit from using Google Custom Search as you can present them with a much smaller set of search results. @hgjohn
#27
DearComputer
Shows full original images
instead of the small thumbnails for Google Image Search.
I often use this Goggle Image Ripper to capture images for the IWB as it puts all the images in their full size on the page. Then I use the camera tool to capture the images or I right-click on them to copy and paste them straight onto my flipchart page @lismiss
#28 - Creative Commons Search http://search.creativecommons.org Whether finding images to use in their own work or to help with other online projects, our class use Creative Commons Search. Once you have introduced the idea of licensing and correct usage, this is a great search tool to help children find permissible resources. @tombarrett
by Franรงois @ Edito.qc.ca
#29 - DiscoverEd - ccLearn http://discovered.creativecommons.org/search/ A BETA search tool from Creative Commons that helps you to discover open educational resources (OER). DiscoverEd is an aggregated search engine including OER Commons and LessonPlanz.com amongst others. Tagged results show Curator, Edu Level, Licensing and Language.
by judy_breck
@tombarrett
#30 - Compfight - CC Image Search As long as Flickr isn't blocked in your area, then Compfight is one of the easiest ways to find Creative Commons attributed images for blogs, web pages and presentations. Set the search engine to look for Creative Commons Only.
Tip: Once the children have found the image they want in Compfight I teach them to copy the Creative Commons link from the resulting Flickr page to use as their image attribution. @hgjohn
#31 - 10x10 News Search 10x10 displays 100 images of breaking news, updated every hour from; BBC World News, Reuters and the New York Times. Clicking on an image gives you a link to the news story. You can go back in time to any date and hour after 2004 to see what was happening then. @theokk
#32 - Shahi
Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images. A useful combination of types of information in this search engine. The definition is offered with a range of thumbnails of the search term from Flickr (+Google +Yahoo) A simple way to support literacy for different children in the class. Each new search term loads on top of the previous. In this way you can see a history of searches - useful for language activities in the classroom.
http://blachan.com/shahi/
@tombarrett
#33 - Search Engine for Younger Children http://www.kidrex.org/
A simple search engine that is easy to read the results and safe search is automatically turned on! @teggie19
#34 - Google Squared Create a table that compares a range of specifications for a subject with Google Squared: http://www.google. com/squared Type into the search bar and compare things like: Australian primeministers Chemical elements Canadian states It is simple to edit and remove unwanted data or add extra specifications.
Eugene de Gouw
If you would like to: Contribute your ideas and tips to the presentation. Let me know how you have used the resource. Get in touch. You can email me or DM me on Twitter I am @tombarrett If you add a tip (or even if you don't) please tweet about it + the link so more people can contribute. Other "Interesting Ways" Presentations. IWB Google Earth Google Docs Pocket Videos Twitter
Image: ‘Sharing‘
Thanks for helping Tom Barrett