Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Let the Research Come to You

Google Scholar is one of useful research tools that high school students often overlook. Searching on Google Scholar is not like searching on Google.com or searching in any other public search engine. Google Scholar indexes scholarly, peer-reviewed academic papers, journals, theses, books, and court opinions. These are materials that students usually won’t find through Google.com, Bing, or Yahoo search. Just they can do for Google.com searches, students can create Google Scholar alerts. Google Scholar alerts notify students when new materials related to their search queries appear on Google Scholar. The screenshots below offer directions for creating Google Scholar alerts.

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Here are this week’s most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers:
1. 26 Videos About the Science of the Winter Olympics
2. Strategies for Getting Access to Websites Blocked By Your School
3. Behind the Published Posts and eBooks
4. Save the Cell Phones!
5. Padlet Is Now Available in 14 Languages – Here’s a Guide to Using It In Your Classroom
6. AirPano – Gorgeous 360 Degree Virtual Tours of the World
7. Doodle Your Invention In the Doodle 4 Google Contest

This week the first registrations came in the for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Even though it is still five months away I’ve already been working on plans to make it the best workshop experience of the year. This week I lined up a fantastic assistant instructor in Mike Morrell who has been doing a lot of fun technology-infused activities with high school science students for years. Here’s one of the things I saw Mike do last spring. He’s also one of the most friendly people you’ll ever meet which is why students and colleagues alike are often found hanging out in his classroom before and after school.