Simple Google Searches

Google Searches

First of all, keep your search simple if you can. Basic words and places are easily searched for and will bring you the most results. So "pizza 79401" (a zip code) may yield results closer to you than "pizza restaurants in Lubbock, Tx".

Searches for exact words and phrases can be entered with quotes. The search will keep the exact phrase in the exact order. For example "Alexander Bell" will find all sites with those two words in that order. Your search results may be missing relevant information from sites with Alexander G Bell or Alexander Graham Bell.

Normally Google will ignore common words like the and &. So if they are important to your search put quotation marks around them.

To help narrow down the number of sites your search displays, try to weed out the search results you don't want with the minus sign. For example. Alamo Heroes will not only bring up Bowie, Crockett, and Travis, but the Alamo dome in San Antonio, the car rental, the movies, and anything else Alamo related. So a search term like Alamo Heroes -dome -car -rental -movie will weed most of the extra search results out. Putting quotation marks around "Alamo Heroes" will narrow it even further.

  5,100 results is more manageable than over 1.57 million results.







Check back for more fun things you can do with Google.

If you are looking for one of your students to be the next Google Doodle, make sure to check out their contest where the student can submit their doodle, with a scholarship, and a prize for their school. https://www.google.com/doodle4google/

Another Timer

This one is a bit different than the previous posts about timers.
http://scottfirenza.blogspot.com/2014/01/teachit-timer.html 
http://scottfirenza.blogspot.com/2014/01/online-classroom-timers.html

This one is another one of Google's great search tools. In any Google search box type in, "Timer for X Y" with X being the amount of time you want and Y being the measurement.

So for example, I typed in timer for 10 seconds and pressed the enter key on the keyboard.
Google put in their search results page a 10 second timer that starts immediately and beeps when completed.

A blue progress bar moves as the timer counts down. There is also a small broken square just to the right of the timer that will set the timer to full screen if clicked.


So this starts a series of posts on "What Can Google Do for You?" Keep checking back to see an new search tool you can use.

75 Creative and Useful Imaging Websites

I found a great site that compiled a list of image creators and editors. I have posted on some of these in the past  (Online Photo Editors) and most are in this list.

The list comes from a 2012 TCEA presentation by Bridget Robinson from Clear Creek ISD. Some of the links may be broken but there are many links that teachers and students will like to help create images for their projects. It also looks like it may get added to as the real count is 136 websites.

Take a look.

https://sites.google.com/site/technologystuffinfo/

TEQ Online

 


Teq has been a great resource for me for about a year or more. They are a company that offers professional development mainly to the New York area, but offer many online webinars and resources. Many of them cover SMART Board resources, but they do offer other technology PD as well.

Make sure to check out the main portions of their site.

Their Blog - a great place for quick tips and tricks

Educator Resource Center - offers many interactive whiteboard lessons and resources like objects and game templates

Video Archive - Check out archives of their Webinars, and quick tutorial videos on a variety of other technology.

Teq Resources - offers several eBooks covering topics such as SMART Notebook, Apps, flipped classroom, and their latest one All Things Google.

Links - this is a page that links to many resources they refer to in many of their presentations. You might have to sift through the Hebrew and common core links, but there are many great links already gathered here.

They have also just started an Online PD site of over 50 courses of live web-based PD, but it does cost an individual $200/year to join.


It would definitely be worth your time to check out the free resources at Teq.

Search Google for Creative Commons Images

In an effort to teach our students and model Digital Citizenship, Google has added a great feature to their search tools to help look for images under the Creative Commons copyright license.

Conduct a Google images search as you normally would.

Click on the Search Tools button to display the Size, Color, Type Time, Usage Rights, More Tools section











Now you can choose to search for images of a certain size or color, any type like photo or clip art, when the picture was uploaded, and just recently added, by usage rights.

Students can search for images that are filtered for reuse and reuse with modification.

Still a great idea to give credit when you can, list the URL the image came from (not www.google.com), and documentation that the image was used under a creative commons license.

If you are looking for other CC images to use for projects teachers can also turn to Flickr. Many images on Flickr are being uploaded for reuse and reuse with attribution. here are some search engines that will look through Flickr for you.
flickrCC
Compfight 
FlickrStorm 
Simple Flickr CC Search
Flickr Creative Commons Search

Image searches can still bring up inappropriate images for students. So be very careful about just turning students loose on an image search. 
One suggestion I have for teachers that ask how to stay safe on an image search is to gather a group of pictures together for a project and allow the student to choose from that group of pictures selected by you. It is easy enough these days to grab the image off of the Internet so it shouldn't take too long to gather a large group of images to use for student projects. 

A Recipe for Great Teaching

A Recipe for Great Teaching is a short 5.35 minute video from Keith Hughes that talks about the four ingredients that go into being a great teacher. A good video for pre-service teachers or to open a dialog during a teacher PD.

iPad Apps

The often asked question, "What is a good iPad app for X?" with X being whatever subject the student needs help in.
My short answer, "I don't know." Which makes me sound a little dumb, but I usually follow up with the following.

There are over 1 million apps out there and I heard the other day that over 60% of them are geared for education in one way or another.

So how do you sort through all of those apps? Here are a few resources by people who have done so.

TCEA - http://www.tcea.org/ipad - A crowd-sourced app list kept by the Texas Computer Educators Association. It is broken down by curriculum area and is added to often. A good list to check back with.

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything - http://www.schrockguide.net/ipads-in-the-classroom.html - Including an extensive iPad apps page. Kathy has listed everything from K-12 List of Ipad Apps, to apps by Bloom's Taxonomy, to tutorials on how to use the iPad, and many more related materials. I especially like the iPad content app evaluation guides that teachers should use to help evaluate apps, especially paid apps before the purchase.

Richard Byrne's iPad Apps for School - http://ipadapps4school.com/ - Richard is always updating tis page with the latest apps he discovers for classroom use. Don't forget to also check out his regular blog Free Technology for Teachers.

From time to time I will highlight an app on here that I find. More often than not it will an app that will address one of the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy or a tool that will help a teacher do their job more effectively.

If you discover a great app that I should post, let me know using the contact form on the right side of the screen.

iMovie for the iPad

iMovie is a wonderful tool for students and teachers to edit and create movies. It is $4.99, unless you purchase and activated your iPad after Sept. 2013, then it is free. But even at $5 totally worth it. 

My favorite part of the app, besides the easy editing, is the trailers creation. Trailers are short templates that already have scenes, types of shots, transitions...created. All you have to do is drop in your media and change the text and let iMovie do its thing. 

Save your movie to the camera roll or upload to YouTube (make sure to login to YouTube first).

Great resource from TCEA14 from Chris Miller from Sanger ISD

https://www.smore.com/y33f-lights-camera-action-with-imovie

OneNote

OneNote is a program that came with our licenses of Microsoft Office that I use for keeping notes from meetings and conferences. Similar to Evernote but with a Microsoft touch.

A couple of good things going on with OneNote at the moment.

The online version that you can connect to your SkyDrive account (not called OneDrive ) now has it's own direct link. Create your OneDrive account and sign in to http://www.onenote.com/.

I don't know long it will last, but the OneNote iOS app is free. They have had a free version up to a certain number of notes you create, but from the description it sounds like it is free for unlimited notes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote-for-ipad/id478105721?mt=8















I have a been able to take notes on my computer using the actual OneNote program that came with our version of Office, the app on my iPhone, the app on my iPad, and online with a Chromebook. Pretty nice to be able to look up my notes from anywhere.

Not a bad tutorial on setting up that OneNote account.