Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Google announced today the gradual release of a new search feature which will help users get more reliable results. Search results in Google will now start showing an icon which when you click on it will display more information about the source site without having to actually visit it.

When looking for public domain and Creative Commons licensed images to use in multimedia projects I generally recommend going to sites like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Photos for Class instead of Google Images (my full list of recommendations is available here). The reason for that recommendation is that in the past Google Images hasn't been terribly clear about image licensing even when the "labeled for re-use" filter has been applied to image search results. Fortunately, Google is taking some steps to change that.

The power of Google search engine lies in its hidden features. Getting precise search results requires much more than simply comping up with a random search query and hitting  ‘I am feeling lucky’ button. Google search is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught to students.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here is a handy visual featuring 8 important Google Drive search tips for teachers. More specifically, you will get to learn how to: search for a document that contains a specific phrase, search for files that contain at least one of the words, find documents that do not contain a particular word, find documents owned or shared by or with a particular person, search your Drive by document type, search for documents edited before or after a specific period of time, find documents by title, and finally find items that can be opened by only certain apps.

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. 

A few days ago, we shared with you this handy infographic featuring 12 important tips to help you refine your Google searches and get precise search results. Today, we are introducing you to these equally important resources shared by Google Inside Search. 

For those of us who remember a time before the internet, using Google for research might feel strange -- like being thrust from the cozy confines of a favorite library straight into the Wild West of the web. But in today’s world, it’s impossible to ignore Google Search as a legitimate tool for research.

Google's advanced search tools can help students find useful information that doesn't necessarily appear at the top of search results pages. Unfortunately, students often forget about the advanced search options or don't even know where to find them.

Google announced today the gradual release of a new search feature which will help users get more reliable results. Search results in Google will now start showing an icon which when you click on it will display more information about the source site without having to actually visit it. 

Last week I hosted a Practical Ed Tech webinar titled Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know. Afterwards I had many requests for accessing the recording of the webinar. The webinar is now available on demand. If you missed it, the webinar is available as an on-demand webinar right here on Practical Ed Tech.

Here is a handy visual you can use with your students in class to help them become better Google searchers. We have outlined 8 search tips that students can use to narrow down their search and get accurate results. All of these tips are nested in Google Advanced Search which is accessible from 'settings' in Google search homepage. This visual is also available in PDF format from this page.

Last spring I had a chance to see Dan Russell give a presentation of a new Google search tool called Dataset Search. It spent 2019 in beta. Last week it lost beta label and is now widely available to anyone who wants to use it. 

Over 1.2 trillion Google searches are done per year; that’s more than 40,000 searches per second. It’s so easy to type in a few keywords or a question when searching the web. Despite the magnificence of Google and other search engines, they cover only 4% (about 8 billion pages) of the world wide web; the additional 96% goes way beyond Google… 

The most significant portion of the world wide web, the invisible web, is inaccessible by search engines like Google. It’s also called the deep web. Before we show you how to research beyond Google, let’s first answer questions you’re probably asking at this point. Is the deep web also the dark web? Is it legal to access the Deep Web? 

Google is definitely one of the major entry ports for searching the net. Knowing how to conduct effective and smart search queries on Google has become an important skill for 21st century students. There is an over-abundance of information online and unfortunately a decent amount of the online knowledge is amateurish, unfiltered and at worse misinforming. This is why Googling the world wide web goes beyond randomly typing a bunch of words and waiting for the ‘feeling lucky’ button to do its work; it’s rather an informed process that takes into consideration a wide range of variables that include the choice of the words we use in our queries, the positioning of these words in a search phrase, the use of operators and symbols and many more.

Teaching students how to conduct smart search queries online is an important part of cultivating a digital citizenship culture within your classroom.  Smart searching goes beyond the simple ability to conduct quick search queries to how to effectively locate information online and assess their authenticity and accuracy. In other  words, smart searching encompasses a complex set of interrelated skills and competencies that together make up the holistic picture of what it is to be a search savvy netizen.