Better Googling - Teaching Students (and Teachers) To Search

An interesting article came to my attention about how people use Google. Google seems to be the go-to search engine, but there are easy ways to make your searches much more successful.

One great shortcut is "Control-F". After clicking on a website from your Google search results, hitting "Control-F" allows you to search for a key word on that webpage. Say you were looking for information about bald eagles being an endangered species, and your search takes you to a page listing all the endangered species. Using "Control-F" allows you to find "bald eagle" on that page and jump directly to it.

Researchers found that only 10% of Google searchers use "Control-F". This shortcut works on any document or webpage, not just after doing a Google search.

A website called A Google A Day was created to teach different searching strategies. Users can read tips and tricks or play games designed to become better searchers.

As a reading teacher, I see many parallels between "technology literacy" and nonfiction text features. Using the index is similar to "Control-F". Pictures and captions, graphs, charts, and other features are in both areas.

Thanks to Hack Education for the information.