MindShift

Wondering how to use Google’s new Knowledge Graph? The resulting panels to the right of the main results are meant to move research beyond simple data retrieval into deeper topics. At the same time, the new tool could serve as a better way to use key words.

The new sidebar shows key facts that users might want when they run specific types of queries, such as people, animals, and geographic locations.

How can this tool be used for student searches? Here are some ideas.

READY REFERENCE

A student searching for [Tolstoy] would see this box to the right of her regular search results:

Precisely which data points appear in this panel are largely based on a combination of two things: what facts searchers most often look for when they Google [Tolstoy] and which facts are actually verifiable through an automated process.

For students, this quick presentation of facts can free up time to dig into the deeper questions. For example, what’s the link between Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau? Imagine a whole new version of the “Six Degrees of Separation” game, where these panels inspire deeper research into a James Burke-esque set of connections among entities.

TRACKING FACTS

How can we confirm the information presented? The main image for each topic lists a source, and the topic summary is often from Wikipedia, but what about the rest of the information? Playing around with the information in the boxes reveals some insight into this.

When a search triggers a box, each fact in it actually has one or more hyperlinks. Check out the results for Sagittaria, the genus including the now-famous Katniss, and note that the classifications Continue reading →

Image wrongly attributed to Rube Goldberg

Can’t figure out the source of an image you found online? There’s an easy trick you might not know about — and it’s an essential tool for citing sources.

Students who find images they want to use in projects need to follow the appropriate rules of citation: state the title and the original source.

But with so much misinformation and mis-attribution online, students might either change the research topic to avoid the problem altogether or simply cite the source poorly.

Take, for example, a student wanting to use this image (above) labeled as a cartoon by Rube Goldberg. Since he wants to use it in a project, he must find the original source of the image, but when he tries looking through Rube Goldberg’s illustrations of absurd, overly-complex machines, the artistic style looks different. That was a dead end.

But there’s a Google tool that allows him to use an image as a search term.

Within just a few seconds, he can discover another artist, named W. Heath Robinson, who also designed humorous machines. With just a few more clicks, he will identify “Testing Golf Drivers,” Continue reading →

The wired world has made it possible for people from all across the globe to connect and learn from each other. In a few days, New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof will host a Hangout and interview United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice during school hours. In classes across the country, students are hearing about the Greek debt crisis; presidential elections in France, Serbia, Armenia, Greece, and Egypt, as well as Secretary Clinton’s recent travels to China.

International news coverage gives us one set of perspectives on these events. But students can also have more immediate access to global conversations — in the languages that are being spoken. Here’s how.

TRANSLATED FOREIGN PAGES

Google’s translated foreign pages offer a direct view into websites created in other languages. Enter a simple query, such as [presidential election], and you’ll get a typical page of results. If you’re searching in the U.S., you’ll tend to see information on the latest Republican primaries, the date of the national election in November, and both general web search and Google News results about the upcoming election. To the left-hand side of the screen is a column showing a number of links, including one promising “More search tools.” Continue reading →