It’s not much time to give up – half an hour. But in that time at Paganel we have just honed up our search skills not only to save us hours of time planning and preparing lessons, but also to improve the quality of what we teach.
This is what the staff meeting looked like:
Here’s some places to go for safe searches:
– a website with vetted pages.
On Google, remember to use:
- Wonderwheel
- Timeline
- Picture filters
- Custom Search
Here’s one of my custom searches: Paganel Space Search
Short and simple.
The first few links to Sweetsearch and IPL are links to vetted searches – ace for primary schools where an un-monitored Google search can lead to unmitigated disaster, or at least embarrassing conversations with parents and/or senior managers, even if the safesearch is set to strict. The image search for ‘copyright free’ images is an interesting one for us. In the past we’ve not considered this very much and have used pictures willy-nilly whatever their copyright might say. Now, as educated, law-abiding members of the 21st Century, Paganel staff will only use images that are copyright free.
The second section – guidance on wonderwheel and timeline – should help staff get to the information they need quickly when preparing lessons. And the fact that you can search for images down to wanting a red line-drawing of a pirate is quite remarkable.
Finally we finished the meeting by looking at a Google Custom Search that I had made – ‘Paganel Space Search’ (above). I had used sites found at the IPL (also found above). Each member of staff had to then make their own custom search for a forthcoming topic (which range from Rainforests to the Victorians).
As members of the 21st Century we have to teach our children to use search safely and efficiently to find the information they need. Teachers need to be able to search for information quickly and also teach how to use search within the curriculum.
Which is why I concluded the meeting by showing the staff the Interesting Ways series for the first time. The Interesting Ways on Search was particularly interesting.