Success in Teaching Teens to Search the Internet: Playing a New Google Game Presenter: John McCreary, ITS Audience: Grades 6-12 Hands On in the Anwatin Media Center March 3, 2006, 1:00 pm

Why Teens like Google “Teens prefer clean, modest but still cool designs”

Why Media Specialists can like Google too “The ultimate goal is to have a computer that has the kind of semantic knowledge that a reference librarian has,” says Google’s directory of technology Craig Silverstein. Levy, Steven. All Eyes on Google. Newsweek 29 Mar. 2004: 58.

Who is better at searching the Internet - Teens or Adults? Success rate on web tasks: Teens 55 percent Adults 66 percent Ishizuka, Kathy. Teens Are Tech Wizards? Not! School Library Journal Apr. 2005: 24.

Why are teens not as successful? insufficient reading skills less sophisticated research skills dramatically lower patience level difficulty wading through and making sense of a lot of complex information

Collaboration between teacher and media specialist Teaching simple search strategies What can be done to help teens be more successful?

Observations and suggestions Teens are impatient Use initial search box, not Advanced Search Teens like to keep things simple Teach only a few key strategies Teens want to be engaged Make the lesson interactive

Two Types of Searches: A basic search gives general information. A narrow search helps answer a specific question. Use these 4 tools for narrow searches.

Tool #1 Use double quotation marks to look for words in exactly the order in which you enter them: “human rights” “the great depression” “affirmative action”

Tool #2 Use the minus sign (-) to exclude a word from from your results: Vikings -football Treasure Island - hotel Note* Google automatically inserts plus (+) signs.

Tool # 3 Search only one site operator: Site:edu Site:org Site:gov Which site operator narrows your search the best? Check it out!

Tool #4: Limit the number of words in your search to 10 or less. Google allows up to 10 words as search terms. Example: “colonial america” winter sports recreation men women children site:org

What’s the Research ?: What’s the question you want an answer for? Be specific. Think of keywords to search with.

The Google Game: (don’t call it the Google Game) With a partner, use the four Google tools to answer the questions prepared by the teacher. Record the search terms you use and the number of results for each search. The team with the fewest number of useable results wins!

Hint: To the right of the Google search box, there are these items: Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools. Click on Preferences, scroll to Safesearch Filtering, click on Use Strict Filtering. This process must be done in each user’s preferences and will help with limiting access to inappropriate sites while doing searches.

Have fun! Google is rich with searching tools and techniques. The four tools explained here will get you off to a great start! is for intellectual searching - Your goal: find that elusive query (two words - no quote marks) with a single, solitary result!

Acknowledgements This session, presented by Katrine Watkins (librarian) and Kate Elder (communication arts teacher) at the American Association of School Librarian’s Conference in Pittsburgh, PA in October, Donna VonLehe presented this at a Curriculum Connect in Minneapolis