Let Google™ Manage Personal and Professional Briefings for You
Researching background information to spice up the dull and bland content of most textbook…to add human interest to an otherwise flat course…eats your time in "big gulps."
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Empirical experience is the reason that Colleges and Universities calculate two hours of preparation time for each hour of face-to-face instruction that instructors and professors. Much of this time is spent in research.
If public school teachers were treated as professionals, then public school teachers would teach far fewer hours, and receive more than one 45 minute "conference/ planning" period per day.
Of course, many public school teachers teach 5 1/2 hours and spend another four, five or more hours in uncompensated class preparation. But, much of this amounts to scoring papers, evaluating work assignments and calculating grades.
But, what "flight plan" can the over-booked teacher follow? Maybe library visits the entire weekend, plowing through books and journals is unrealistic. Why not take a cue from professional pilots, and put your research on "autopilot?"
Internet surfing, even at broadband speeds, only saves commute time. Individual topic searches (especially for relevant information that enlivens course content or current events) still wipes out teacher free time.
So, hire Google" as your personal "color-commentary coach." Or, rather, Google™ and friends.
Let these "research big guns" do much of the leg work for your research.
Coaching and "Gophering:" Not your Basic Search
But, don't plan on searching for what you want using the Google™ search engine. This type of searching takes far too long to sift through each individual topic. Culling junk from a search that returns 85,000,000+ Web pages cannot result in a time savings.
Instead, you need to avail yourself to a number of free services.
Here are the tools:
What Soople™ and the Ultimate Google™ Interface do is simplify Google™'s Advanced search with a streamlined interface. By using either of these interfaces, you avoid needing to remember the advanced Google™ search syntax.
What these Specialized Searches Do for You
Google™ Alerts:
Google™ Alerts is a service that delivers search results to your E-mail inbox.
The kinds of information that Google™ will deliver to your E-mail inbox, on schedule< include:
- News Alerts: Provides headlines from Google™ News
- Web Alerts: Provides links to new Web pages that meet search criteria
- News and Web Alerts: Combines both types of search results
- Groups Alerts: Provides links to new messages that are posted in Google™ Groups
There are multiple schedules that you can set up for receiving these free Google™ Alerts. These include:
- As it happens
- Once a Day
- Once a week
The frequency that you select depends upon your needs.
For example, News alerts provide only the top ten results while Web Alerts provide only the top twenty search results.
If you need more results than these, the the "As it happens" is the most appropriate Google™ Alerts query.
The most useful way to use this service is in conjunction with a free Gmail account, also from Google™.
Automated Search
There are two approaches to automating search:
- Save searches as "bookmarks" or "favorites"
- Create desktop shortcuts
Stored searches are ways to return to search results within one or two clicks.
The benefit of using "bookmarks" or "favorites" is that this strategy enables you to store searches in a outline or hierarchy
Of course, this hierarchy structure can be developed with desktop shortcuts that launch specific searches, too. However, nested desktop shortcuts require multiple "clicks" to sift through the hierarchy.
The benefit of nested shortcuts is that these shortcuts can be stored on a USB drive (or other removable device.
Other strategies include creating a free Blogger™ or WordPress™ and storing search results as links within the Blog.
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Google™ also offers other services including Google™ Notebook.
Classroom Toolkit cannot recommend the Google™ notebook because of our aversion to installing toolbars that record our Web activities.
If you already have the Google™ toolbar installed, then you can add Google™ Notebook to this toolbar.
The Google™ Notebook will save notes as you search the Web.
Smarter Research
Here are some resources for automating a smarter search system…
Ten Tips for Smarter Google™ Searching
Google™ Search Operator Guide
Using Google™ for research (From the University of North Carolina - Asheville
A Scholarly Guide to Google™ (From Harvard)
Googling to the Max (From UC Berkeley)
Google™ Scholar Help (From Google™)
