I appreciate the potential advantages of online courses, especially using the power of the internet to make courses more interactive. That said, I also appreciate the potential to just upload text materials and stop there. So how does one harness the potential in a reasonable amount of time? I looked at the Merlot site, hoping to find video clips of classroom instruction that could be used to illustrate a particular instructional feature: classroom management, working with diverse learners, using a particular instructional strategy. I was overwhelmed by the number of resources available and felt like I was drowning in possibilities. Is there an easier way to narrow down possibilities without spending hours on the web?
I was just talking with some MAT students about this challenge of sifting through the tsunami of resources online. I discovered that there are a lot of search tricks I take for granted, such as these Google commands you can use right in the search box:
“active learning” — use quotes for a phrase
active ~learning — use tilde for related words
learning -passive — use minus sign to exclude words
intitle:learning — use intitle: for better relevance
site:ed.gov — use site: for a specific institution
filetype:pdf — use filetype: for specific items like PDF articles, PowerPoint presentations, or Excel spreadsheets
related:ed.gov — find similar websites
Try this example search that combines several of these search tips (copy & paste the whole line into a Google search box):
site:ed.gov filetype:pdf “lesson plans”
Hope this helps!
Sara, thanks for sharing these search techniques. This is very helpful to all, and could be a substantial time saver!