A Google a Day

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One major topic that I've spent a lot of work time on the last few weeks is Digital Citizenship. I've been working on creating a course for students as well as a quick introduction for staff to bring these essential ideas into the forefront of our students' (and teachers') minds as we embark on the implementation of the Idaho Core. Part of my research has led me to an idea that I've taught my students in the past, and work with other teachers on using in the classroom, which is effective search skills with search engines. Whether a person is using Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine, knowing how to cipher through the list of results and find things that are relevant and useful can be a chore.

One thing that I've found through my own searching and through suggestions by others (thanks +Jeff Utecht/@jutecht and a reminder from a teacher in my district @117rocks) is A Google a Day. This search game can act as a great way to start a class or reinforce ideas that have been discussed regarding search techniques and digging into search results.

Players are given a question that cannot be answered from the front page of a search result. Usually it is something rather obscure and may take several layers of searching to find (see today's first question below). There is a split screen and more points are given for the faster a player finds an answer. If the answer typed in is wrong, a message will pop up indicating an incorrect response and time will continue to elapse.


I can see great potential in this to teach search skills and to promote students to learn to click further into sites to determine validity and relevance. This could be done as a warm up at the beginning of class, or even as an individual or group competition. 

As with anything that we use from the internet in our classrooms, we should be sure to preview the content that students will be accessing just to make sure that it is appropriate for their level and maturity. Some questions may miss the mark on that and as the teacher you may not want your students to be researching certain topics. Be sure to be proactive and take the time to look at the questions before you unleash them on your students. Also, be sure to create an open, trusting environment where students will feel comfortable navigating around on different sites looking for answers. 

To make modifications to this, the teacher could always create topical, relevant questions and facilitate a similar game without the Google interface. Just be sure to make the questions multi-layerd and not simple to find, as that would negate the beauty and intricacies of this activity. 

Happy Googling!


Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 26, 2014 at 2:22 PM

    Love the "Google a Day" idea! Great way to help students dig more deeply into the search function.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DanApril 10, 2014 at 1:45 PM

    I agree! I think that we assume, too much, that students know how to search for things effectively. Many times, the information we really want to find is not readily available with just a search. Links have to be clicked and pages read (or skimmed) for the real content.

    ReplyDelete

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