Blog Commenting Pathway

Our eighth grade language arts classes will be connecting with another school, across the state, through blogs on their own interests. This week, we will be reading the other school's blog posts and making comments.  Students usually struggle with how to make effective comments to blogs, so I created a poster to encourage them to think before they post.  Only after they have gone through the path of commenting should they post their comments.  I will also add that their comments should be at least three sentences long, but this should be obvious when going through the pathway of commenting.

Adding a Global Perspective to your Google Search

When researching history or global topics, it is important to get a global perspective rather than just being egocentric and biased from what our news sources are providing.  This is an important skill we teach students and it also addresses many social studies standards.

 Before the Internet, the only ways to gain a global perspective  was to get news from friends or family in other countries or get ahold of old media such as newspapers from different countries.

Today, it is very easy to get a global perspective on historical or news events by adapting your Google Search.  You can search the same topic but filter so you only get results from a certain country.

You can do this by typing google.us in the omnibox to get the results only from the United States.  To get results only from Germany, you can type in google.de and then do your search from there.  For those of us that are not bilingual, if you use the Chrome browser you can use the Google Translate tool which is directly activated in the browser.

Every country has their own domain extension.  For example, sites from Germany have the "de" extension.  Sites from Spain have the "es" extension.  (List of country domain extension)

You can also do this within the advanced search option in Google.  You will need to go up to the gear in the top right hand corner of your search results.  Then, click on Advanced search.

Make sure you have the topic in which you are searching in the Find pages with....area.  Try Christopher Columbus as an example.  From there, you can complete the global results in two different ways.  You can either click on the region area and choose the country from which you want to display your results or you can type in the domain extension in the site or domain box.  Then, click Advanced Search in the bottom right hand corner.

Your results will be different based on your location, as you can see below.

Give it a try with a topic you are teaching in class and then teach your students how to search with a global mindset.

Changing Reading Level of Google Search Results

Are you tired of searching for information on Google and getting results that are too difficult for you to read?  This will come in handy when doing research projects and a lot of the results come back with an adult reading level.  Below will show you the steps in changing the reading level of your Google search results.

Step 1:  Search for your topic on Google.  I am going to search rainforests.

Step 2: Click on Search tools box.

Step 3: Click on All results.

Step 4: Choose Reading level from drop down menu.

Step 5: Click Basic to filter sites to results that are easier for you to read.

Step 6: Enjoy your results!