S TOP SPINNING IN CIRCLES … BETTER SEARCHING FOR RESOURCES Heather Miller Bruce Herbert

Do you ever feel like this when looking for resources for your classroom inquiry?

B ETTER SEARCHING ON G OOGLE Every word matters Generally all the words you put in the query will be used Search IS case sensitive Punctuation is ignored Can’t search for special characters Exceptions C++, $, underscore

Keep it simple Use words most likely to appear in what you are searching for Use as few terms as possible Choose descriptive words

E FFECTIVE S EARCH T IPS WITH G OOGLE Web search: Think keywords that are most likely to appear on the web page Type several words what you need to get relevant results

S EARCH FOR … What happens when you search for Inquiry Science inquiry Biology inquiry

ADVANCED SEARCH FEATURES Phrase search (“ “) search exact order "scientific inquiry" Search within a specific website (site:) you can specify that your search results inquiry site:tamu.edu Terms you want to exclude (-) You can indicate that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear inquiry -biology -journal

ADVANCED SEARCH FEATURES The OR operator inquiry OR questioning For particular file types You can restrict your results to particular file types inquiry filetype:pdf

ADVANCED SEARCH FEATURES Fill in the blanks (*) Wildcard Search exactly as is (+) Texas, +science Find synonyms (~) Looks for that words synonyms ~run (will search run, running, marathon,runner’s) Range (..) Searching a range of numbers Earthquakes, California,

You can also search by Books computer code news archives all things mac, unix, lunix, Microsoft US Government universities

U SE YOUR R ESOURCES PLC-METS wiki DLESE NDL Teacher’s Domain iTunesU Teacher Tube

D IGITAL L IBRARY FOR E ARTH S YSTEM E DUCATION (DLESE) collection of resources, activities, & data searchable by grade level, resource type, collection & standards virtual field trips

N ATIONAL S CIENCE D IGITAL L IBRARY Library of education & research Science Technology Engineering Mathematics Resources, tools, & lessons

T EACHER ’ S D OMAIN free media resources from Public Broadcasting NOVA, Frontline… Correlate with state & national education standards Must sign up - FREE

I T UNES U collection of FREE content instructional videos/podcasts

T EACHER T UBE online community for sharing instructional videos FREE, sign up to download/upload safe venue for teachers/schools

H ANDS - ON Learners use real-world materials to conduct investigations they help plan Search the sites that already have lessons on them Modify or use as is DLESE NSDL PLC-METS wiki

S IMULATION Allow learners to “gather” data & examine the relationship between variable Learners can manipulate variables Simulation +physics +roller coaster

D ATA SET Access to data sets previously collected Data set +fish –journal Data set +earthquakes +Texas mpendium/earthquakes_contents.htm

E VIDENCE EVALUATION Learners are presented with data, but not an explanation, they then determine whether evidence supports the explanation given

V ERBAL DESIGN Teachers poses a question, learners design a study to answer the question