Five Google Search Tools 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. Those tools are:

  • Google Books
    • This is a good place for students to search for books and search within books. I particularly like the ability to search for a phrase within a book then jump directly to that page where I can then highlight, copy, and save relevant text.
  • Google Scholar
    • Not only is Google Scholar great for locating peer-reviewed articles from academic journals, it’s also a tool students can use to look up patent filings and court cases.
  • Google Public Data Explorer
    • This draws on data sets from the World Bank, the US CDC, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources of public data. The Public Data Explorer makes it possible to quickly create visual representations and visual comparisons of the data sets. I should note that this tool hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it still contains good information.
  • Google Dataset Search
    • Google Dataset Search is a 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.
  • Google Fact Check Explorer
    • This is a tool that anyone can use to explore the veracity of claims made on the Internet. On Fact Check Explorer you can enter a topic or name then see a list of articles accompanied by notations about the accuracy of the claims in those articles. You can click through to the source of each article and the fact checker.

Watch this compilation video for an overview of those five overlooked Google search products that can be helpful to students.

50 Tech Tuesday Tips

50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created with busy tech coaches, tech support staff, and media specialists in mind. In it you’ll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions.

This book is one I found via Google Books then ordered a printed copy. It arrived at my house last weekend. I’m now enjoying reading about the most famous person from my neighborhood.