Controlling where to google

How I wish I knew this little trick when I taught middle school and I wanted to limit where the kids obtained researched information. What's done is done ... but as I create a library of great chemistry websites, I think this tool will come in handy to guide students to specific internet sources.

As teachers, we have the power. The power to control where students search.
The power to control what information students can see.
The power to control how material is presented to the students.

This is yet another time that I ask myself, "Why had no one ever told me I could have this power?!"

Custom search engines. That's where the power lies.

Do you want this power? Do you need this power? Here's a video to demonstrate how to set up a custom search engine:




And here is a custom search engine I created for my students in my Advanced Chemistry Research class. As they search for articles about fatty acids and physiology, this custom search engine limits them to websites that are .edu or .nih.gov. When searching, their results will be limited to the sources I set as acceptable. This is what my custom search engine looks like:

You can see that it says "Custom search" in the bar. That's how you know that you have it set up correctly. If you type in something into your search bar, you should find that all the results fulfill the limitations you set when you created your custom search engine.

Surely, you can think of an assignment or project when you could use a custom search engine to guide student learning. Instead of just telling the students where they can go or posting on the board the websites you want them to use, now you can set up a search engine with restrictions in place.

You're already thinking of times when this would be a valuable tool, aren't you?

** If custom search engines aren't impressive to you, then check out this post about cool features of gmail.