This week in the Freshmen Skills class students took part in a workshop on Google search skills. This included a discussion on different search engines available and an introduction into how Google actually works when you hit the search button – 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 from this Google Form, which involved determining key words, completing multiple-part searches and some critical thinking on the part of the student:
Finally, 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:
And more resources like these can be found on the Google Search Education site.