What I Learned At Google: Take Advantage of Their Learning Resources

Not that long ago, I went to Google's campus. It is so close to ITP.  We all use Google sometimes. The search engine seems so simple and easy, but there is an art to searching. Google educators have created blogs and webinars to help you improve your searching and use of Google tools.

SearchResearch blog
http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/

Google Search Education Webinars
https://sites.google.com/site/gwebsearcheducation/webinars

Inside Search blog
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/

Official Google blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
 
These are great for you to check out, but you can also talk to an ITP Librarian for Google search tips and tricks.

What I Learned at Google: Digital Tools

During my recent trip to Google, I was inspired by the Google tools available for using or experiencing information.
Google has launched several new creative free data and search tools:

Google Goggles - It essentially allows you to query reality. Using a smartphone, take a picture of a building or other object. If there is a similar image on the web, Google
Goggles will find it and any related information.
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=166331

Public Data Explorer - We are reaching a point where large sets of data are
accessible with a simple search. Google is giving us the tools to create
beautiful data visualizations which help us to express dynamic data sets.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/home

Fusion tables - Fusion Tables gives you the tools to visualize information in
dynamic ways. Search tip: look for csv files in Google search for data sets.
http://www.google.com/fusiontables/Home/

Google Charts
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Insights for Search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

For fun, try Agoogleaday.com. It is a challenge that is published in the New York Times as well as the web.
http://agoogleaday.com/

Spotlight on Alumni Websites

I find myself inspired when looking at alumni websites. A few I have looked at recently are as follows:

Irene Blinston, Ph.D.

Ryan Rominger, Ph.D. and Scott McCulloch, Ph.D

Allison Perry, Ph.D.

I always encourage students to start using the Web to promote their future career path, whatever it may be. If any alums or current students would like to show off their professional websites, please post to the comments of this blog post so that we can all see them.