Use Google a DayChallenges to practice web searching.
Try the self-paced Google Power Searching course to improve your skills.
Google Art Project : A collaboration between Google and over 150 galleries from across the world. You can take a virtual tour of a gallery and zoom in on a painting to see the brushstrokes. You can view paintings and drawings by gallery or by artist.
A Google engineer explains in How Search Works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs
Provides information for educators on teaching search techniques in the classrom. See the complete Google Lesson Plans:
| Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced | |
| Choosing search terms | Pick the best words to use in academic searching, whether students are beginning with a full question or a topic of just a few words. | Identify unique search terms to locate targeted sources and to use "context terms" to uncover appropriate evidence. | Explore "firm" and "soft" search terms, and practice using context terms to locate subject-specific collections of information on the web. |
| Interpreting search results | Learn about the different parts of the results page, and about how to evaluate individual results based on cues like web addresses and snippets. | Use the results page to check the quality of a search process, and explore specific strategies students can use to improve their searches and their results. | Engage additional search strategies, such as generalization and specialization |
| Narrowing search results | Apply filtering tools and basic "operators" to narrow search results. | Explore filters and additional operators to find new ways to narrow their results. | Compare results for basic searches with ones that use operators to discover the impact the right operator has at the right time. |
| Searching for evidence | Draw stronger terms from preliminary search results, identify evidence, and explore using various media to locate specific types of evidence. | Investigate different page formats (blogs, news articles, wikis, etc), and how to identify the right format for the type of information students are seeking. | Examine Google Scholar, and learn how to find specific collections of information that will contain the best evidence for students' research task. |
| Evaluating credibility | Consider, tone, style, audience, and purpose to determine the credibility of a source | Consider, tone, style, audience, and purpose to determine the credibility of a source. | Track information to a reasonable source and recognize and consider the impact of bias in assessing the credibility of information. |