Create Custom Search Engines with Google
The Internet is a great research resource. The only problem is, it's so big. How do your students narrow down the search results to something useful?
Through lots of practice, we've learned to weed out junk, hone in on the most useful websites or books, and efficiently research a topic. It took years of schooling. Most of our students are still in the early stages of that development.
Now you can use a Google tool to create a Custom Search Engine just for your class. Don't believe me? Head on over to the Google Custom Search Engine website.
How It Works
Google has a pretty simple set up for its custom search engines. When you log into your Google account, you can head over to the Custom Search Engine service and make as many search engines as you want.
All you have to do is type in the URLs you want included. Then save the search engine and try it out. When you type in a query (a search phrase), Google will only look through the pages that you included in your list.
What's It Good For? Possible Uses.
There are a couple of things you could use this for.
Class Resource. The simplest, of course, is to create a custom search engine for a project you're doing in class. Let's say you want students to research slavery and complete a project. There's a wealth of resources on the internet - so you narrow it down to five large sites. Then, students can search only those five sites and not be too overwhelmed with information.
Department Resource. Your department could also work collaboratively to create its own search engine. Google allows you to invite people to collaborate on your project.
One person in the Social Studies department could create the search engine and then invite the other members of the department. Everyone enters the sites that they have found useful in the past. When everything is done, you should have a pretty comprehensive research tool for your discipline - with only approved sites.
Student Project. Another option is to have students create a search engine as a project. It would be an innovative authentic task. Perhaps a group of upperclassmen could create a search engine for freshmen to use.
No matter how you use it, it's a pretty nifty tool. There are times when you want to search the whole web - but there are definitely times when you want to narrow it down for your students. Google's Custom Search Engines allow you to do just that.
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