Research Resources

Today I wanted to show you a really fun research tools website that perhaps some of you already know about but this was completely new to me and I figured if it’s new to me, there’s probably someone else that may or may not have heard about it before.

The reason I actually stumbled across this was because I was looking for resources to help my college student.

I have a junior in college and she’s very bright, graduated in the top 30% of her high school class so she certainly wasn’t the valedictorian but she does fine and she’s done very well in college.

But so many times I see her struggling with research.

It kills me because I use Google all day long. If I have a question about something, if my younger son asks me about whatever and I don’t know the answer, we typically go to Google to try to find the answers and learn about it.

Student Online Research Tool

As I was researching some options for helping her be a better researcher I ran across this really fun website and you can find it at agoogleaday.com.

Want to see the video of me showing you how it works?

Prefer to read the transcript?

“It’s really fun because there’s only one right answer and it’s kind of like a game. Basically just like it explains.

They ask the question and you find the answer and it’s timed. It’s really really, it’s like a game application kind of way to learn how to search the internet better and I really do believe that the better search things that we have going on, so the better search skills that we have going on, the better our searches will be and the more accurate the information will be and it will be faster to find that information.

I think sometimes we just assume that students know how to find anything on the internet because they find all kinds of interesting things, right? But I don’t know that they know the most efficient way to research on the internet.

I’m going to show you how to play it in just a second but I also love down here how it has tips and tricks.

Tips and Tricks Using Google Searches

Let’s go to play and if you go to tips and tricks, this is actually something that I didn’t know.

Obviously I know how to do quotes and all of those types of things but I didn’t know you could search for something but not another thing, or I did know you could search only with a specific site but I have to look this up in the little tips tutorial every single time.

You can search in Google specifically just for a file type, so if I’m looking specifically for a PDF about butterflies I could type that in there.

You can define words. A lot of times I go to dictionary.com, you don’t need to. You could just got to Google and say define whatever word it is.

You can find words in the title of the webpage.

You can even do ranges of numbers, dates, or prices.

You can get more tips and tricks. Those are just some quick ones.

In here is the calculator, and I knew most of those.

That one’s pretty simple. For information you can type this in.

I actually use the movie ones for my zip codes all of the time.

I did not know that they also did flight status within Google itself. Normally I go to a flight tracker or the actual airlines flight tracker.

Those are some pretty fun tips and tricks that you could even have printed out on a poster or a piece of paper that you hang up near the computers to help students as well.

Here’s how it works:

What is the atomic weight of the lightest element of the periodic table? Periodic table. Lightest element. Let’s see. Hydrogen is the lightest element so then Hydrogen atomic weight. There we go, and this is what it says. I don’t know if that’s right.

That’s going to show not right. There we go.

I got it right, it goes on to the next one.

I have to tell you that I’ve been trying to do these everyday myself in order to increase my own researching skills and some of these are really really hard.

FYI on that. They are definitely, I would say many times for olderish students or they could be done with partners of students that are a little bit younger. Obviously you’re going to need to be able to read to do these. Probably not for our youngest students.

You can do give me a hint and you can also do show me the first letters as well. It shows you kind of how many points I’ve heard in the different categories as well, but it’s right on this page, so it helps you find those things.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. I would love to hear your experience with A Google a Day in the comments below or if you have other websites that you really enjoy for helping students learn researching skills, feel free to post those in the comments below too!

~Charity