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Tech Support

Just Google it

This engine’s power extends beyond the simple search

In the summer of 2006, google (see Tech Term) became an official word in the English language, with entries in both the Oxford English Dictionary and the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Ten years prior, two doctoral students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created the original search program while working on the Stanford Digital Library Project.

Through Google’s partnerships and acquisitions, the company has outgrown its humble beginnings. Although visiting www.google.com shows you only the standard search box, a variety of programs and tools are merely a click away. Note the toolbar at the top of the screen that ends with “more.” When you click on “more,” a dropdown box appears that gives you access to more than 40 different search tools, programs and communication applications. All that’s needed to access these additional tools is a Google account, available for free.

A virtual toolbox
A variety of Google’s applications have practical school uses. Google for Educators, www.google.com/educators, is a portal to classroom tools, educational activities and posters; the Google Teacher Academy; and an educator community. Features include:

• Book Search—Search the full text of books and magazines from more than 10,000 publishers from more than 100 countries. You can also create a “library” of your favorites or bookmark specific passages for future reference.
• Custom Search Engine—Keep your students safe and on the right track in their online research by creating a customized search engine that guides them to websites you specify.
• Geo Education—Use Google Earth, Maps, Sky and SketchUp in the classroom to access satellite images of the pyramids at Giza or the Great Barrier Reef, “wander” the streets of distant cities, travel past our atmosphere into the universe beyond and create 3-D models of all you’ve seen.
• Notebook—Bookmark interesting and educational information from the Web, and make personal notes on why you think it could be useful.

Other suggested programs with practical classroom uses include Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Groups, News and Picasa.

Connecting the campus community
Google has set up a package of tools for schools to use, free of charge, to connect educators, students, parents and the community. The Google Apps Education Edition—a set of communication and collaboration tools—provides users with e-mail, shareable online calendars and documents, instant messaging tools, and websites with no software to download or hardware to buy. Your IT department can decide how to mix and match a variety of services to best suit the needs of your campus and its population. Use Gmail for free e-mail; Talk to send instant messages; Calendar to organize schedules and share events; Docs to create and share online word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations; and Sites to easily generate classroom websites.

TECH TERM

Google:

To google something means, officially, to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web. Many people use it as a general term for performing a search on the Internet, regardless of search engine.