How to Teach Kids Google Searching

Most Internet users, even children, know how to search for something on Google, but they probably do not know how to narrow their searches by using simple techniques to help them find exactly what they are looking for.



In this article we will use the example of someone who is looking for information about the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

Instructions

1. Teach the kids that using the "+" symbol will tell Google to only display websites that include the desired topic in the web page. If you add "baseball" to a google search of the San Francisco Giants you reduce the number of hits from 663,000 to 228,000.

2. Teach the kids that adding "-" to their search to signify the things that they are NOT interested in will significantly reduce the number of results. Since the "Giants" are also a football team, if you include a "- football" in your google search it reduces the number of results to 178,000.

3. Explain to the students that the more they narrow the search, the less results they will get. So they can also add a "- barry bonds" to their search to get even fewer results.

4. Create "Internet scavenger hunts" for the students to do. For example, ask them to narrow their search down to the least number of Google results which will yield the correct answer to the question: "Who was the fourteenth president of the United States?" They can significantly narrow their searches by entering "- george bush" and "barrack obama."

5. Once the kids have narrowed their search as much as possible, they will have to click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button to get the correct answer.

Resources

• Rock and Roll Kindergarten