Using the Web as a Resource

Refining your Google searches for the classroom

Many teachers have already discovered that
Google is a great resource for finding class materials.

But did you know that there are a few tricks to
help narrow down your searches?

Let's say you were doing a project with your students on birds, with a focus on Blue Jays.

The problem you may encounter is that you'll
likely find more material on the Blue Jays
baseball team instead of Blue Jay birds since
they share the same name.

So how do you tell Google to search ONLY for
Blue Jay birds?

To demonstrate, if you go to Google and type
"Blue Jays " you may get results which are
related to baseball, not to birds!

In order to tell Google exclude certain content
from a search, you could use a minus symbol in
front of words you don't want to search for.
Note: You need a space between the words
you enter and the minus sign, or Google will
think that the two words are hyphenated.

For example, to tell Google that you want to
search for bluejays, but not baseball you
would type:

By telling Google you don't want any search
results with the word baseball, you're less likely
to get results that aren't baseball related, as
seen below.

If you find that Google still isn't finding
enough results, you can further refine your
search to tell Google to place more emphasis
on certain words with a plus symbol.

For example, to tell Google that you want
to search for bluejays, not baseball and place
the emphasis on birds, you would type
the following:

That's better! All our search results are now
related exclusively to Blue Jay birds:

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Check out The Google Guide for on-line tutorials and references.

Using Google
to Detect
Plagiarism

Wikipedia, the
online
Encyclopedia

Floppy Disks
vs.
USB Drives

Keeping up to date
with the latest
technology jargon

Tips for general teachers
using technology in
the classroom