Five Google Search Products Students Overlook

The advanced search menu on Google.com offers some great search results refinement tools that students should know how to use. Once students have become familiar with those tools, they should start exploring some of the other search products that Google offers that aren't found by just searching on Google.com. In this new compilation video I provide an overview of five Google search products that can be helpful to students (mostly high school and college level). 

In Five Google Search Products Students Overlook I demonstrate how to use the following tools:

• Google Books
• Google Scholar
• Google Public Data Explorer
• Google Dataset Search
• Google Fact Check Explorer

Learn more about Google Scholar in the following videos:

• How to Use Google Scholar to Find Federal and State Court Rulings
• Use Google Scholar to Learn About Inventors and Inventions

Google Search Tools Students Often Overlook

The default action for students to take when given a research task is to turn to Google. Unfortunately, many students won't venture much beyond the first couple of pages of Google.com results pages before declaring, "I can't find anything about this." But as Dan Russell reminds us in The Joy of Search, good search often requires the use of multiple tools. To that end, Google offers search tools beyond just Google.com. Unfortunately, students won't use those tools unless they know that those tools exist and how to use them. Here are some of the Google search tools that students often overlook. 

Google Books helps students locate and search inside books without having to track down a physical copy of each book that they are interested in reading. If students do want a physical copy of a book, Google Books can help them find a local library that has a copy of the book they desire. Those features of Google Books and more are demonstrated in my new video Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books. 

Google Dataset Search is a search tool that is designed to help users locate publicly available datasets. This isn't a tool for searching within the datasets, it's a tool for finding datasets. For example, if you're doing research on earthquakes and want to find some datasets to analyze, Google Dataset Search will help you locate datasets that you could then open and or download to analyze. Watch the following short video to see how to use Google Dataset Search. 

Google Scholar is probably best known as a search tool for locating peer-reviewed, academic papers. It can also be used to locate patent filings and to locate court cases. Those features and more are demonstrated in the following tutorials.

• Five Google Scholar Features Students Should Know How to Use

• How to Use Google Scholar to Learn About Inventions and Inventors

• How to Use Google Scholar to Find Federal and State Court Rulings

My Three Favorite Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of teaching computer science and doing some corporate training. It's teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. I've also been using Google Workspace tools with students (previously G Suite, previously Google Apps, previously Google Drive, previously just a collection of Google tools) for fifteen+ years. These are my three favorite Google tools for social studies teachers. 

Google Earth
Google Earth is available in two versions. The Pro version is the version that you can install on your desktop. That's the version that I prefer if given a choice because it includes more features that the web browser version. And while there are work-arounds for the web version, the Google Earth Pro is a lot better for recording narrated tours. You can find my playlist of Google Earth tutorials here.

Want a lesson plan for introducing Google Earth to your students? Check out Around the World With Google Earth. 

Google Books
This is an often overlooked search tool. Google Books provides students with access to millions of free books and periodicals. Google Books really shines when you start looking for work that was published in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. One of the best features of Google Books is the ability to search within a book for a phrase or keyword. Learn how to use Google Books by watching these tutorial videos.

Google Scholar 

Unlike search results on Google.com, Google Scholar search results isn’t a ranking of websites. Instead, Google Scholar search results are lists of scholarly articles related to your query. Google Scholar can also be used to locate United States patent filings as well as state and federal court cases. Here's an overview of five key features of Google Scholar that students should know how to use.

How to Use Google Books

Google Books is one of my favorite search tools. Unfortunately, students often overlook it as a research tool unless they've been shown how it works. In this short video I provide a demonstrate of the key features of the current version of Google Books. 

In the video you'll see how to:

• Search for a book. 
• Refine search according to publication date.
• Use Google Books to find books in your local library. 
• Use Google Books to search within a book. 
• Create an online bookshelf to share with others. 

If you just want to see how to use Google Books to find libraries near you that have house rare books, watch this short video that I posted on Instagram last Friday morning. 

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11 Search Tips and Tools for Teachers and Students

As some of you have noticed, I wrote quite a bit about search tools and search strategies in July and early August. What you saw in those posts were excerpts from two projects that I've been working on. The first was The Practical Ed Tech Handbook (available to subscribers to my newsletter). The second is a still untitled book project. If you're interested in reading all of my recent blog posts about search tools and search strategies, here's a list of them all. 

Changing Search Predictions

How Excluding Words Helps Narrow the Scope of a Search

Why You Should Refine Search Results by Language, Region, and Date

Why You Should Try Refining Search Results According to Domain

Why You Should Try Refining Searches According to File Type

Using Google Books in History Classes

Patent Search and Five Other Google Scholar Features Students Should Know How to Use

Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books



How to Use Google Scholar to Learn About Inventions and Inventors



How to Use Google Scholar to Find Federal and State Court Rulings



Other Search Engines for Students to Try

Add Google's Ngram Viewer to Your List of Research Tools

Google's Ngram Viewer is a search tool that students can use to explore the use of words and names in books published between 1800 and 2019. The Ngram Viewer shows users a graph illustrating the first appearance of a word or name in literature and the frequency with which that word or name appears in literature since 1800. The graph is based on the books and periodicals that are indexed in Google Books.

The Ngram Viewer will let you compare the use of multiple words or names in one graph. The example that I give in this video is to compare the use of the terms "National Parks," "National Forests," and "National Forest Service." By looking at the Ngram Viewer for those terms I can see that they start to appear more frequently around 1890, have a lull in the 1940s and 1950s, and then appear more frequently again in the 1960s. 

Ngram Viewer is based on books indexed in Google Books. That is why below every graph generated by Ngram Viewer you will find a list of books about each of your search terms. Those books are arranged by date. 

A third component of Ngram Viewer to note is that it works with multiple languages including English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, and Spanish. 

Applications for Education
As I mentioned in the video above, the Ngram Viewer can provide a good way to start a research activity for students. Have them enter a few words then examine the graph to identify peaks and valleys in the frequency of the words' usage. Then ask them to try to determine what would have caused those words to be used more or less frequently at different periods in history.

By the way, the book that I mentioned in the video is That Wild Country by Mark Kenyon. 

Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books

Last week I wrote an explanation of why Google Books can be a helpful research tool for history students. In short, it helps students locate and search inside books without having to track down a physical copy of each book that they are interested in reading. If students do want a physical copy of a book, Google Books can help them find a local library that has a copy of the book they desire. Those features of Google Books and more are demonstrated in my new video Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books. 

Using Google Books in History Classes

As the name implies, Google Books is a search engine for locating books. Through Google Books you’ll find books that you can read in their entirety for free and books that you can preview for free. Most importantly, Google Books lets you search for keywords within books. Searches on Google Books can be refined according to date of publication, access level (full view vs. preview-only), and publication type (book vs. periodical).

A typical example of using Google Books in a history setting is found in a search for information about the Battle of New Orleans in The War of 1812. Head to Google Books and enter a search for “War of 1812.” Then refine the search to books with a full view published in the 20th Century and you’ll quickly locate The Naval War of 1812, volume 2 authored by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. You can then use the “search inside” function to find every page that makes a reference to New Orleans. You can then quickly jump to each page that references New Orleans because each page in the search result is hyperlinked. You can read those pages online or print them for reading offline.

It should also be noted that you can search within books that are marked as preview-only. The utility in that is identifying how much content there is related to your search term within a chosen book. If that search reveals that there is a substantial amount of useful content, you can then use the “get the book” function in Google Books to locate libraries in your area that have a copy of the book. The “get the book” function will also provide links to places to purchase copies.

A video overview of how to use Google Books is available here and is embedded below.

This blog post was written by Richard Byrne and originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere it has been used without permission. 

How to Share Books in Google Classroom and Google Sites

One of my favorite features of Google Books is the option to clip sections of free ebooks to share with students. It's also possible to share with your students an entire ebook from Google Books. You can then use those clips or full books to spark discussions in Google Classroom. Another way to use the clipping and embedding feature of Google Books is to create a digital bookshelf of public domain works in a Google Site. Both of those things are demonstrated in this new video that I recorded yesterday afternoon. 

Watch this short video for a general overview of how to search in Google Books.

Two Ways to Find Free Ebooks to Download

Every day I'm hearing from teachers who can't get back into their classrooms because their school buildings are completely closed. My own school building has very limited access and only by administrative approval right now. These kind of closures have left some teachers searching for online alternatives to the books, particularly free reading time books, that are in their inaccessible classrooms. If that describes your situation, here are a couple of good places to search for free ebooks that you and your students can download.

Google Books
Google Books can be a great place to search for free ebooks. One of the features that I like best about Google Books is the option to search within a book for keywords and passages before you download it. In addition to downloading ebooks you can embed free ebooks from Google Books into blog posts and webpages.




The Internet Archive
Before you jump to the Internet Archive I have to give my usual disclaimer about it. There is a ton of educational materials available through the Internet Archive. However, there is also material that you probably wouldn't want younger students to stumble upon. Therefore, I always recommend searching the Internet Archive yourself and then just selecting and downloading materials to share without sending your students to the site directly.

How to Embed Books Into Your Blog

Google Books is one of my favorite tools for research. It's also a great place to find all kinds of free books that you can read online and or download to read offline. Google Books also provides tools for embedding free books into your blog posts and webpages. These tools are available in both the classic version of Google Books and the new version of Google Books. In the following video I demonstrate how to find free books on Google Books and how to embed those free books into your blog posts or any other place that accepts iframes.

Google Arts & Culture Presents "From a Picture to 1000 Stories"

Google Books turned 15 this week. To mark the occasion Google released an interactive book titled From a Picture to 1000 Stories. The interactive book is a part of the Google Arts & Culture Institute.

In From a Picture to 1000 Stories readers learn some fun facts about famous authors and their works. On the pages that have the facts about authors and their works you will find a set of images. Each of those images leads to a page of book recommendations based. The book recommendations pages lead directly to Google Books where you will find options for downloading and or purchasing the book. Overall, it's an interesting way to discover new books.

Google Books has been one of my favorite research tools for years. The new version of Google Books appears to be rolling out to more users all the time. In the following video I provide an overview of how to use the latest version of Google Books. Below that video you'll find an overview of the classic version of Google Books.

My Top 5 Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of special education and corporate training thrown in for good measure. It's teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. That's why I always get excited when readers send me questions like the one I got on Monday from a teacher who was looking for ideas about using G Suite and Google products in his classroom. That question inspired me to make a video and send him the following ideas.


VR Tour Creator
This is Google's free service for creating virtual reality tours. In a social studies classroom students can use it to record virtual reality tours of historical landmarks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, or unique geographic features that spurred the development of civilizations. A playlist of VR Tour Creator tutorials is available here.

Google Earth
Google Earth is available in two versions. The Pro version is the version that you can install on your desktop. That's the version that I prefer if given a choice because it includes more features that the web browser version. Google Earth Pro can be used by students and teachers to record narrated tours and to layer historical imagery on top of current map views. You can find a playlist of Google Earth tutorials here.

Google Books
This is an often overlooked search tool. Google Books provides students with access to millions of free books and periodicals. Google Books really shines when you start looking for work that was published in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. One of the best features of Google Books is the ability to search within a book for a phrase or keyword. Learn how to use Google Books by watching these tutorial videos.

Google Expeditions
This is Google's free virtual reality service. Students can use it to go on more than 800 virtual reality tours. You can either guide students through the tours or let them guide themselves. Take a look at these videos to learn how to start using Google Expeditions.

Google Keep
Google Keep is a bookmarking and note-taking tool that students can use as part of their G Suite for Education accounts. It's a convenient tool to use to save bookmarks with notes. Students can add labels to their bookmarks to make them easy to organize. The best feature is that students can access their Google Keep bookmarks and notes from Google Docs to insert their bookmarks and notes directly into the papers they're writing. Here's a set of Google Keep tutorial videos.

Six Google Product Updates Made in May Impacting Teachers and Students

Google is constantly making updates to the services that they offer. Some of the updates are only affect the administrative side of G Suite for Education. I rarely write about those updates. Then there are updates that have a direct impact on teachers and students. Those are the ones that I usually write about. Here are six updates to Google products that were made in May and have an impact on teachers and students.

New Google Docs Formatting Options
As was announced yesterday, there are a couple of new formatting options in Google Documents. The new options include new section and page break options. You can also now adjust the margins for a section of a document without affect the margins for the rest of the document. These features are available to some users right now and will be widely available in the coming weeks.

A New Carmen Sandiego Game in Google Earth
Following up on the popularity of the Carmen Sandiego game that was released in Google Earth in March, Google added another Carmen Sandiego game to Google Earth in May. Watch my video below to see how to access the new game.



Google Sites Photo Carousels
Google Sites now has an option to include a photo carousel within your site's pages. You'll be able to insert images by uploading from your computer or importing from your Google account.

Team Drives Renamed as Shared Drives
This change was actually announced on the last day of April, but the change didn't start going into effect until May 21st. The change has already happened in some G Suite for Edu domains and is still coming soon to others.

A New Version of Google Books
The new users interface for Google Books appeared in May. What my video to see what's new and how it works.



Gmail Confidential Mode
The new confidential mode for Gmail started to appear in some domains in May. By the end of June it will be on by default in all G Suite domains. This could be a great option to use when you're emailing colleagues about issues related to students. Watch my video below to see how the confidential mode works.

How to Use the New Version of Google Books

On Monday I published a list of my ten go-to tech tools for social studies teachers and students. Google Books was one of the tools that I included in that list. Recently, Google Books got an updated user interface. The new interface includes some handy features including an option to quickly locate libraries near you that have your chosen book available to lend out. Watch my new video embedded below for an overview of how to use the new version of Google Books.


Google Books is a fantastic tool for students to use to locate books and search within those books. As is demonstrated in the video even if a book isn't available to download in its entirety, students can still search within the book to determine if the book contains enough references to make it worth their time and effort to buy or borrow a copy of the book.

Ten Great Tech Tools for Social Studies Lessons

Over the last decade I've written about a lot of excellent resources for social studies lessons. Over time some of those tools have faded away and others have moved to the forefront of my top recommendations. Here's my current list of ten top tools for social studies lessons.

Timeline JS
Timeline projects as as old as history classes themselves. It used to be that timelines were only made on paper. Today, students can build timelines that include videos, audio recordings, pictures, and interactive maps. Timeline JS is the best tool for making multimedia timelines today.

StoryMap JS
StoryMap JS is produced by the same people that make Timeline JS. StoryMap JS enables students to tell stories through the combination of maps and timelines. On StoryMap JS you create slides that are matched to locations on your map. Each slide in your story can include images or videos along with text.

Google's VR Tour Creator
Google's VR Tour Creator is a free tool that enables anyone to create virtual reality tours that can be viewed online and in the Google Expeditions app. In the year since the VR Tour Creator was announced it has added features for including featured images and audio recordings.

Google Expeditions
Google's free virtual reality application that lets students virtually tour more than 800 places around the world. The best of Google Expeditions is the option for teachers to lead students on virtual tours. When leading students you can point out the landmarks that you want to make sure they see and you can ask them questions about those places. Here's a list of tips for getting started with Google Expeditions in your classroom.

Anchor.fm
If you have ever considered making a current events podcast or a history podcast, Anchor.fm makes it easy to do that. You can record, edit, and publish through Anchor.fm. The best part is that you can publish your podcast to up to ten podcast networks from one place with just one click.

Metaverse Studio
With Metaverse Studio students can create augmented reality games and tours. Making an augmented reality tour of historic landmarks in your community can be a good way to have students research local history and produce a product that they can share with the community.

Checkology
In today's media climate it is more important than ever for students to be able to recognize what is and isn't valid information, how media is manipulated, and how to be responsible consumers of media. Checkology is a service that is designed to help students develop those skills. Checkology's free version offers four interactive modules for students to complete. Each of the modules is comprised of between twenty and forty-seven instructional video clips and interactive comprehension checks. The four modules are titled Info Zones, Democracy's Watchdog, Practicing Quality Journalism, and Misinformation. As you might expect, the contents of the modules gets progressively more difficult as each section is completed.

Google Earth
The desktop and browser versions Google Earth should be a standard in the collection of tools that a social studies teacher uses. Google Earth provides a great way to view places and collections of places around the world from overhead and street-level views. Viewing in Google Earth lets students zoom-in and explore details in a manner that simply can't be replicated in printed maps. And students can build their own tours in Google Earth. Take a look at this playlist to find tutorials to help you get started using Google Earth in your classroom.

WeVideo
If you want to have your students try their hands at making Ken Burns-style documentary videos, WeVideo is great tool for that purpose. With WeVideo students can mix images, video clips, audio, and text to create a short documentary video. Here's a collection of short tutorials on how to create a video with WeVideo.

Google Books
Google Books offers a huge collection of books, magazines, and newspapers that are in the public domain. For history teachers this means there is an abundance of books about famous battles, biographies, and other works that your students can access for research. The option to search within a book is useful in helping students find information within a book.

This Chrome Extension Helps You Find Books to Borrow

Library Extension is a free Chrome extension that will show you local library listings for the books that you viewing on Amazon, Google Books, Barnes & Noble, and other popular book retailer websites.

Library Extension currently shows listings from more than 4,000 public library databases in the United States, Canada, UK, New Zealand and Australia.


Applications for Education
Library Extension could be a useful extension for students who are using Google Books as a part of their research processes. The extension will quickly let students know if a book that they have found in Google Books is available to borrow at a local library.

One drawback to the extension is that you can only view results from one local library at a time.

To learn more about using Google Books, check out Search Strategies Students Need to Know. 

How to Organize Shelves in Google Books

Creating bookshelves in Google Books is a great way to organize a selection of books around a topic that your students are studying. Think of creating Google Books bookshelves as a way of building reading lists for students. In the video below I demonstrate how to make bookshelves in Google Books.

Google Books Ngram Viewer Overview

The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a search tool that displays when and how often a term appears in books indexed by Google Books. By using the Ngram Viewer you can discover when a term starts to appear in literature, how often a term appears, and when a term loses popularity in literature. In the video embedded below I provide an overview of how to use the Ngram Viewer.


Thanks to Dr. Lynn Burlbaw at Texas A&M University for sharing some of his Ngram Viewer examples with us earlier this summer at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp.

A Guide to Google Books for Students & Teachers - Best of 2015-16 School Year

All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at the end of each day, I'm taking this time to feature some of the most popular posts and new tools of the 2015-2016 school year.

Google Books is one of my favorite research tools that students and teachers often overlook. In a post earlier today I embedded a book that I found through a Google Books search. Google Books allows you to do that with books that are in the public domain. I have done that a lot over the years when I wanted to share all or part of book with my students in an electronic format. Embedding books into blog posts is just one of many features of Google Books that teachers and students can use. In the slides and videos below I provide overviews of the other useful features of Google Books.