Archive for the ‘Search’ Category
Improving your use of Google Scholar
Google Scholar is among the best scholarly search engines online, yet only a few educators know its secrets. As a rule of thumb that applies to all Google products, the effective use of any service from Google’s can only be achieved through mastering its deep and hidden features. I will be walking you step by step through those important features that Google Scholar provides to its users. I am very much hoping that you would share it with your students and help them conduct better searches in Google Scholar.
instaGrok – A new way to learn
instaGrok basically lets you punch in any search term and get a neatly formatted and interactive experience as search results. We believe that learning should be fun! So we are dedicated to building innovative technology to enable engaging, safe and personalized learning.
- finds age-appropriate educational content on any topic presented with interactive multimedia interfaces
- generates quiz questions based on student’s research activity and skill level
- supports creation of research journals and concept maps for learning assessment
Quora
Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.
One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: “Oh, great! That’s going to have all the information I want about that.” It’s also a place where new stuff–that no one has written about yet–can get pulled onto the web.
People use Quora to document the world around them. Over time, the database of knowledge should grow and grow until almost everything that anyone wants to know is available in the system. When knowledge is put into Quora, it is there forever to be shared with anyone in the future who is interested.
Giving you fresher, more recent search results
Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.
If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played). Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type [olympics] without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.
Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.
The impact of Internet technologies: Search
Searching the Internet has become an almost reflexive act. Each day, tens of millions of global citizens fire up their personal computers and handheld devices to troll for information on products or to glean insights that will help guide business decisions. Yet the economic value of this enormous current of search activity remains largely unknown. Current estimates rely mainly on brute measures, such as the number of searches performed or advertising revenues reported by search companies themselves. These estimates fail to take account of how trillions of clicks combine to boost productivity, open new pathways to problem solving, or simply make life easier.
A new McKinsey study, The impact of Internet technologies: Search, takes a more comprehensive view of this phenomenon and its rising value. We looked at five key developed and developing economies—Brazil, France, Germany, India, and the United States—indentifying nine activities that are primary sources of search value, as well as 11 private, public, and individual constituencies that reap the benefits.
Google Web Search Education
Why teach search?
Google understands the importance of finding the right information at the right time. We create tools to let you find the information you need, of the kind you need, when you need it. In most cases, a simple search works really well. But for more specialized questions, a bit of instruction in how to search improves all searcher–from middle school students to trained professionals–and lets you discover and use more, higher quality sources than ever before.
CloudMagic Searches Gmail & Google Docs at Lightning Speed
Search for something in Gmail and the query will take anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute depending on the product’s temperament. The wait can be agonizing. The far speedier version of Gmail search engineered by CloudMagic is anything but painful. CloudMagic, a browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox, is more than a Gmail search tool. The plugin offers an integrated search experience across Gmail, Google Docs and Contacts, supports Google Apps users and allows for multiple accounts. Once installed, the CloudMagic search bar sits in the upper righthand corner inside Gmail and Google Docs and provides a search-as-you-type experience that feels unbelievably fast.
