Productivity for Teachers: Organization and Time-management Strategies for Educators
This show delivers tips for teachers about how to become more productive, get organized, and save time. If you are looking for quick action steps you can take to gain back valuable hours every week, you are in the right place! This podcast provides no-nonsense insights for K-12 teachers, aides and support staff.
You will find answers to questions like:
How do I organize my paper lesson materials?
How do I organize my digital files?
How do I streamline my lesson planning?
How do I create systems to help me remember what worked well?
How do I keep track of things I need to fix in my lessons?
How do I stay on top of all my other responsibilities?
How do I spend less time in my email inbox?
How do I speed up grading and giving feedback?
Productivity for Teachers: Organization and Time-management Strategies for Educators
007 | Google Search Tips and Tricks: Save Time and Improve your Results
Supercharge Your Classroom Research with These Google Tricks
As educators, we often find ourselves turning to Google for quick answers, lesson ideas, and resources. But are we using this powerful search engine to its full potential? In this episode, I'm sharing 10 Google search tricks that will revolutionize the way you find information online, saving you precious time and energy.
Mastering the Art of Google Search
From pinpointing exact phrases to uncovering hidden gems, these techniques will sharpen your search skills and yield more accurate results. Whether you're researching for your next lesson plan or hunting down that elusive worksheet, these strategies will make your online searches more efficient and effective.
Download the Google Search Quick Reference Guide here: https://www.productiveteacher.academy/resources
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Hi teacher friends. I hope your week is going well. Thanks for joining me. Today we are going to talk about Google Search tips and tricks. We teachers spend a lot of time every day googling things. So in this episode I will share 10 Google search tricks that will improve your search results and save time. Now, I know a lot of you listen to this podcast while you're driving, so I did put together a quick reference sheet of these 10 Google search tricks that you can download at my website at www.productiveteacher.academy and then click on free resources. That's www.productiveteacher.Academy and click on Free Resources. Alright, let's jump in. So the first trick is to use quotation marks around something when you want it to be in that exact order or those exact words in your search. This is handy for names that might have a lot of different variations, but you just want that one specific name or anything else where you want the order of the words to be exact. So put quotation marks around that word or that phrase and then that is what will pop up in your search results. The second tip is to use an asterisk to find all forms of similar phrases or unknown words and phrases. For instance, if you wanted to find variations of the phrase May the force be with you, you could type in May the then an asterisk be with you and then you would get all the other variations that people have used over the years, including May the fourth be with you. This is also super handy if you can only remember certain parts of lyrics to a song. You can type in what you remember and use an asterisk to fill in the rest. The third tip is Reverse image search. This is such a handy feature. I just used it the other day to see if I remembered correctly that a certain picture I had of a German city was in fact the correct city. So go to images.google.com and click on the camera icon and then either upload your file or drag and drop it into the window. Or you can also paste a link to the image into the Google Reverse Image search. Super handy. The fourth trick is using search operators plus and minus to include or exclude certain things from your Google search. For instance, if you wanted to google the Marvel Universe but only have results for TV series, you could type in Marvel Universe, then plus and then TV series. Don't put a space after the plus so plus and then TV and series and you will only get results for Marvel Universe TV series. More commonly though, I use the exclude function. The minus function. I am a big genealogy nerd And I just used this the other day to find some information about my ancestors with the last name of Van Buren, like the President Van Buren, but not related to the President Van Buren, but they lived in New York State, which of course that was where he was from as well. So I searched Van Buren and put in some other information and then I did a minus sign and then president. So minus and then no space after the minus and then president. This is really handy for excluding information that you don't want. Another example would be if you wanted to search information about a Jaguar car, you could put in minus animal or minus cat and only get information for the car. The fifth tip is to search by file type. For instance, if you wanted to find some worksheets that others have already made for you, you could put in your search terms and then type in File type all one word, file type then colon and then the file type that you want and don't do any spaces for any of that. So file type all one word, no space, colon no space and then PDF and then you will only find results that include a PDF. And remember, if you're having a hard time keeping track of all of these suggestions, you can go to my website www.productiveteacher.academy and download my quick reference guide under Free Resources. The sixth tip is to search in a specific website. So you could type in your search terms and then type in the word site S I t e colon and then the website. For instance, if you wanted to find a specific flashcard set in Quizlet, you could type in your search terms, then type S I t e no space colon no space and then www.quizlet.com and then that will pull up all the flashcards that meet your search criteria only in Quizlet. The seventh tip is search within a specific date range. This is especially handy if you're googling news events or recent events. Below the Google Search bar on the right hand side you'll see the word tools. You click on that. Then one of the options you will see is anytime and there's a drop down arrow next to that and click on the drop down arrow and then you can select a date range that's suggested the past week, the past two weeks, the past month, the past year. Or you can put in a custom range. So type in your search criteria and hit Enter. And then after you have received your results click on Tools and narrow it down to the date range that you want. The eighth tip is using the Advanced search feature. This is also under Tools. You'll see it next to anytime. And when you click on that it opens up many filters, up to 12 I think. And my favorite one in there is at the very bottom usage rights. So you can narrow your search results to things that are royalty free. For instance, the ninth tip is find related sites. So if you have found a website that has great resources for your specific field, you can type in related colon and then the URL to that specific website. Again, no space before or after the colon hit enter and then you will have results for websites that are similar to the one that you just entered in the search bar. The final tip is how to search for interchangeable words or definitions. For instance, in German there are many different words for a specific tense in the language. Some textbooks call it the narrative past, other textbooks call it the simple past, and yet other textbooks call it the imperfect tense. So if I were looking for resources about the narrative past or the simple past or the imperfect tense, I could use the word or between all of those phrases and make sure that you type the word or in capitals. So I could type in worksheets German narrative past, then the word or in capitals simple past then the word or and then imperfect tense. And then I should get results that include all of those. So Those are the 10 tips and tricks for Google searches to speed things up for you and improve your search results. As you know, here at the Productivity for Teachers podcast, we recommend taking it slow. Don't overwhelm yourself. Don't fall into that perfectionist trap. So I would recommend downloading that quick reference guide that I talked about again. It's at www.productiveteacher. and then click on Free Resources. And once you've downloaded that, pick one or two tips that you're going to try to focus on for the next couple weeks. Pick the ones that you think will be most useful for what you do on a daily basis, and leave that Quick reference guide handy on your desk, not only to remember how to type in the strategy, but also to remind yourself to do it in the first place. So, teacher friends, I hope this episode was useful for you. Please subscribe or follow the show and I will see you next week.
