Google has launched a new site called Search Education aimed at educators who want to teach online search strategies.
The site includes lesson plans geared at different levels of expertise -- beginner, intermediate and advanced-- as well as training videos that walk through different strategies for subjects like using Creative Commons and Google maps.
The lessons cover the following topics:
- Picking the right search terms
- Understanding search results
- Searching for evidence for research tasks
- Narrowing a search to get the best results
- Evaluating the credibility of sources
For each topic, lessons for every level of searcher goes into deep detail, offering background explanations of how search works the way it does, specific examples of search words and their results, and numerous tips. There's also a short quiz at the end of each lesson.
The lessons are aligned with the Common Core Curriculum Standards and refer to the K-12 College and Career Readiness (CCR) Anchor Standards. According to Google, the lessons are not intended to comprise a whole research unit, but to be integrated into various units as they fit to individual educators' needs.