Dear Diary,Today I am hard at work on finalizing all of my Active Learning exercises for my upcoming Chemistry Databases class. To that end, I have created an exercise for 8 of the 9 classes we have.
Although created for younger audiences, this website as an interactive educational tool to identify copyright issues and learn how and why copyright law applies to everyone.
http://www.copyrightkids.org/quizframes.htm
I have also developed 3 different Scavenger Hunts for Web of Science, NCBI and Patents. Two begin with Word Find puzzles and the other one begins with a "Riddle me this..." Pretty clever if I do say so myself.
Instead of Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy exercise I have designed a Lecture Bingo, for 2 of the more complex lectures. I chose Lecture Bingo to ascertain who is paying attention and as a way to break up the monotony.
I have created a Google Keyword Crossword Puzzle to reinforce advanced searching options such as the use of a tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term for synonyms.
Another exercise reminds the students that Boolean Operator "OR" must be uppercase between search terms.
*I include some interesting asides from their website, such as:
What does "Google" mean?
The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which was coined byMilton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Agoogol refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Agoogol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in theuniverse -- not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use ofthe term reflects our mission to organize the world's immense (and seemingly infinite) amount of information and make it universallyaccessible and useful.
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/
Searching Ewmew Fudd still retrieves same results as regular Google!
http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/m/index.cgi
Searching elgooG also still retrieves same results, but with a slight Headache!
You can Vanity Google yourself, one of my favorite past times. But I didn't know that Google had an opinion about me one way or the other, until I discovered this.
http://www.googlism.com/index.htm
Google never ceases to amaze me. You can search Patent Numbers, such as:
Patent 5934226 (Bird Diapers)
There is a Handy Dandy Calculator Feature!
To use Google's built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you'd like done into the search box and hit the Enter key or click on the Google Search button. The calculator can solve math problems involving basic arithmetic, more complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants. Try one of the sample expressions below:
These sample queries demonstrate the utility and power of this feature:
5+2*2
2^20
sqrt(-4)
half a cup in teaspoons
160 pounds * 4000 feet in Calories
Naturally if you want to see who links to a specific website you can simply type in:
link:www.nd.edu
And lastly you can get definitions by typing:
define:umlaut
