The advanced search menu at Google.com offers great search result refinement tools that students should know how to use. Once students are familiar with these tools, they should begin exploring some of the other search products that Google offers that cannot be found simply by searching on Google.com. Those tools are:
- google books
- This is a good place for students to find books and search within books. I especially like the ability to search for a phrase within a book and then jump directly to that page where I can highlight, copy, and save the relevant text.
- Academic google
- Google Scholar is not only great for locating peer-reviewed articles from academic journals, but it’s also a tool students can use to search for patent applications and court cases.
- Google Public Data Explorer
- This is based on data sets from the World Bank, US CDC, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other public data sources. The Public Data Explorer allows you to quickly create visual representations and visual comparisons of your data sets. I should point out that this tool hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it still contains some good information.
- Google Dataset Search
- Google Dataset Search is a tool designed to help users locate publicly available data sets. This is not a tool to search within data sets, it is a tool to find data sets. For example, if you’re doing earthquake research and want to find some data sets to analyze, Google Data Set Search will help you locate data sets that you could then open or download for analysis.
- Google Fact Check Explorer
- This is a tool that anyone can use to explore the veracity of claims made on the Internet. In the Fact Check Explorer, you can enter a subject or name and then view a list of articles accompanied by annotations about the accuracy of the claims in those articles. You can click on the source of each article and the fact checker.
Watch this compilation video for an overview of those five overlooked Google search products that can be useful to students.
50 Tips for Tech Tuesday
50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook I created with busy tech trainers, help desk staff, and media specialists in mind. In it, you’ll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis for your own short professional development sessions.