Search Like an Expert: New Google Search Lessons Unveiled at NECC 2009

Released at NECC 2009  are a new series of education friendly lessons .  

Looking for something? First stop might be the Google search box. Becoming a skillful searcher is an essential skill for teachers and students in our media rich environments. The search box provides abundant amounts of information quickly at our fingertips. So, how do you use the Google search box to get just the right amount of information, analyze it for authenticity, and get it quickly? The new Google Search Lessons are aimed at helping teachers and students learn the inside scoop about skillful searching.

Check out nine compelling and practical lessons for students to understand and be successful with the Google search process. The lessons are divided into three modules; Understanding Search Engines, Search Techniques and Strategies, and Search Features. Each topic contains three lessons that build on the skills taught in the previous lesson. Teachers can mix and match lessons depending on the skills they want to emphasize. The lessons provide a guide for teachers, inquiry questions, a slide presentation, and search challenges for students.

Web search can be a remarkable research tool for students - and we've heard from educators that they could use some help to teach better search skills in their classroom. Search lesson authors are three Google Certified teachers Lucy Gray, Cheryl Davis, and Kathleen Ferenz. They used the work of Dan Russell, Senior Research Scientist, Search Quality & User Happiness at Google to organize and determine the search content and the domains of search.

The lessons are short, modular and not specific to any discipline so you can mix and match to what best fits the needs of your classroom. Additionally, all lessons come with a companion set of slides (and some with additional resources) to help you guide your in-class discussions.

Module A: Understanding Search Engines

Understanding the fundamentals of how search engines work will help your students become better searchers. This module starts with basic concepts and concludes with something that educators overwhelmingly asked us to cover: teaching students how to judge search results and validate the authority of sources they use

1. Start your engines (Basic) 
   Web 101; search engines overview; online content that is indexed and searched.
   


2. Which link should I follow? (Intermediate) 
   How Google search works; anatomy of a search results page.
   


3. Believe it or not (Advanced)
   
Validating site authority; taking a research stance when using a search engine.

Module B: Web Search Technique and Strategies

Search is easy but some practice and technique will take your students a long way. This module will help you teach basic tips and tricks and conclude with methods to deal with even the most challenging searches.

1. The Keys to Search City (Basic) 
   How to organize and approach a search. 
   


2. Your search toolbox (Intermediate) 
   Best practices for keyword selection and use of search operators.
   


3. The advanced search squad (Advanced) 
   Different types of content indexed by Google; using it to address search challenges.

Module C: Google Web Search Features

We are constantly trying to improve search and making Google more useful. Help your students take full advantage of Google's search technology with a solid understanding of its features and functionality.

1. Start Out (Basic)
   Every day search features, tips and tricks. 
   


2. Step Up (Intermediate)
   Using Google's search options, Advanced Search and operators. 
   


3. On Top (Advanced)
   Taking advantage of language tools; experimental features and more.  
   

More resources: 

• Google Search - The Essentials
  
• Explore Google Search: Search tips videos, Google search engineer stories, user testimonials
  
• Google Search Help: Basic and advanced Google Web Search help.

Use these lessons in your classroom. Post your thoughts, ideas, and ways in which you use them. We want to hear from you. 

Posted by Cheryl Davis, Kathleen Ferenz and Lucy Gray 

Expanding Your NECC 2009 Experience

View and edit NECC 2009 Washington, DC in a larger map. Please add your recommendations!

It's that time of year again... The International Society for Technology in Education will celebrate its 30th birthday in a few weeks by hosting the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington, D.C. For me, it's a particularly exciting time to be visiting our nation's capital in light of our new president and a renewed focus on improving education.

NECC 2009 promises to be professionally rejuvenating event for anyone interested in educational technology. It is a potentially overwhelming conference with nearly 13,000 attendees and approximately 500 vendors presenting their wares. For the record, educational technology has never been about the tools for me (although I do revel in the cool factor of many technologies), but about leveraging learning for kids. That said, I hope that educators from a wide variety of backgrounds and interests will attend for similar reasons. I would actually like to see the excitement about educational technology filter down more to those who aren't necessarily techie geeks like myself.

For the past few years, I've posted a blog entry highlighting a few tips and tricks for making the most of your NECC experience. Review my ideas for 2007 and for 2008; I still stand by that general advice. Pick an area of focus, spend time planning before you get to Washington with that theme in mind, and give yourself plenty of time to digest everything. Bring your laptop for taking notes and accessing additional content; I suspect more people will be using iPhones for this purpose, however. Finally, get connected with other educators through the plethora of events that are scheduled. For the second year, ISTE has an online community for conference conversation. Networking isn't just for job seekers or administrators anymore!

If you are not able to attend in person, you should be able to participate virtually as well. Some presenters may elect to post their materials online and to stream video feeds of their presentations. At Edubloggercon, an informal "unconference" to be held Saturday, June 27 as a precursor to NECC, many sessions will also be broadcast via tools such as Ustream. Finally, similar sessions called NECC Unplugged will be taking place in the Blogger's Café during the actual conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

In addition to all this, people will be blogging, posting pictures, and twittering away about conference happenings. You can find this stuff by searching various sources using tags (keyword labels) such as NECC, NECC2009, and NECC09. For instance, search Twitter using #NECC and you'll find a steady microblogging stream. I recommend searching Technorati for blog posts and Flickr for photos in a similar manner.

Finally, I like to make the most of any travel experience by doing a little research ahead of time. I usually do a cursory search in iTunes for content related to my destination that I can put on my iPod or iPhone. For instance, I purchased the audiobook of A Cricket in Times Square for my daughter when we traveled to New York City prior to NECC 2005. In 2006, I traveled to Europe with other Apple Distinguished Educators on a project and I brought along a Passport to Europe episode on Berlin and a No Reservations episode on Paris (this show isn't necessarily for kids, by the way). In addition to these items, there are tons of free podcasts available in iTunes if you do a search for your particular destination.

I've taken the liberty of putting together a few Washington DC related resources. I have not reviewed all of these; I just explored and plucked ones that look potentially interesting. If you have any additional recommendations, please add them to the comments. Enjoy and see you in DC. I'll be in the Google booth from time to time and presenting as part of Larry Anderson's Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner panel. Stop by and say hello!

Washington DC and NECC Resources

Lucy's NECC Calendar - Each year, I use the NECC conference planner to plot any sessions interesting to me. I'm focusing on math, science and interactive whiteboards this year.

Lucy's NECC '09 Map - Join this Google Map and add your info and recommendations.

NECC Ning - NECC's online community; attendees and virtual attendees are welcome to join.

GovFresh - one stop shopping for multimedia produced by the U.S. governent. Everything is aggregated in one place; web 2.0 at its finest!

Apps for your iPhone:

• iTransDC Metro - (99 cents)
• iMetroMap DC (99 cents)
  
• Dubbele.com (99 cents)
• Washington DC Public (free)
• Washington Post's Going Out Guide (free)
• Washington DC Travel Guide (99 cents)
• Washington DC - GPS Tour (99 cents)
  
• U.S Historical Documents (99 cents)
  
• iCongress (99 cents)
  
• politicoTrack ($9.99)
  
• Presidents Match Game (99 cents)
  
• USA Presidents (free)

Podcasts:

• Cityscapes - Washington DC
• Tourcaster - Washington DC City Guide
• Mobile Tours
• Cultural Tourism DC: Audio Journeys
• Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Podcasts
• ARTSEDGE: The Kennedy Center's Jazz in DC
• The International Spy Museum SpyCast
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum iTunes U Page
• Smithsonian Podcasts
• LearnOutLoud's US Presidents Podcast
• The Washington Post Video Podcast
• Washington Week Video Podcast
• President Obama's Weekly Address

TV Shows and Movies:

• Smithsonian Channel ($1.99 per episode to purchase)
• Anthony Bourdrain's No Reservations - Washington DC ($1.99 per episode to purchase)
• All the President's Men ($9.99 to purchase, $2.99 to rent)
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ($14.99 to purchase only)

YouTube Channels:

• Smithsonian Channel
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Newseum
• Library of Congress
• C-SPAN
• The White House

Friday 5: 21st Century Skills

This week, it's my turn to come up with a thoughtful list of resources for teachers, and I have chosen the theme of 21st Century Skills. Recently, in the main stream press and in the edublogger/eduTwitter world,  there has been debate about the validity of such a skill set. This particular blog post will not do justice to this ongoing argument, but I do have one observation to add. 

I recently had the amazing opportunity to travel to Singapore to visit schools and assist with the 2008 Apple Distinguished Educator Asia Institute. A more comprehensive blog post about my experiences will follow one day (I'm still mulling over everything I experienced), but I was really struck by the attitudes of the people I encountered. It seemed to me, from my conversations with administrators and teachers from Singaporean and international schools, that many agreed with the basic idea that students and teachers today are require to employ a different mindset and set of abilities in this changing world. There was no ongoing debate; it was accepted that education had to change in light of this, and that this change happened through collaboration and exploration of global best practices. 

In my opinion, U.S educators need to stop arguing semantics on this topic and need to get down to the business of educating our peers about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Here we are, nearly 10 years into this new millennium, poised to start making meaningful, substantive change happen. Let's get on with it, people! We've got hard work to do!

That said, I'm off my soapbox and I recommend the following resources for investigating the idea of 21st Century Skills:

1) The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner (Tony's website: http://schoolchange.org)

http://tinyurl.com/globalachievementgap

2) The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

http://www.21centuryskills.org 

3) 21st Century Literacies: Tools for Reading the World

http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies

4) 21st Century Learning

http://tinyurl.com/21stcenturylearning

5) The Emergent 21st Century Teacher, Mark Treadwell

http://www.i-learnt.com

6) The Metiri Group: What's So Different About the 21st Century?

http://www.metiri.com/features.html

Feel free to offer any other recommendations in the comments here!

Your Digital Dozen?

• The Daring Dozen 2008: Our Heroes
  

  tags: globaleducation, educators, innovators

Just a quick post today (I'm using the bookmarking service Diigo to bookmark and annotate this link simultaneously) to point out Edutopia's 2008 edition of its annual Daring Dozen list. It reminds me of a friend, currently reading Rafe Esquith's Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, who recently announced to me that this particular book makes her want to be a better person. This list sparks the same inspiration in me; it makes me want to be an innovative thinker and activist. I particularly like the interviews at the bottom of each profile in which the dozen discuss their own sources of inspiration, uses of technology and advice for others.

If you could make your own Daring Dozen list, who would make your cut? Who are others out there leading the way?

Cross-posted at High Techpectations