This week in the Freshmen skills class we did a couple of sessions on Google search skills. This included an introduction into how Google actually works when you hit the search button – PageRank, spiders, etc.. A good overview of this is detailed in the following video:
Next we looked at the layout of a Google search results page and how to choose specific keywords from a question or statement to get the best results.
We then worked through a series of search challenges on this Google form, which involved multiple searches and some deduction:
After running through some examples as a group, where students explained their process to find specific answers, we looked at a selection of other tools that Google provides. This included Google News, Google Newspaper search, Google Books, etc.
Here is the slide deck from the lesson:
More resources like these can be found on the Google Search Education site.