Rewiring Your Ancient Memory for New Learning

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Search Engine Diving

Search engines like Google.com are assets for research papers. But my husband always says, “The error happens between the chair and the keyboard.” In other words, a search engine is only as good as its user.

Use keywords only to get the most out of search results. For example, if you’re looking for advances in geoengineering, search for geoengineering only, not advances in geoengineering. Want to know the habit of an igneous rock?–okay, not really. How about the roles of women in the 19th Century? Type: role women century. The tricky part is figuring out how the Web site’s author used 19th. Did he or she use numbers or letters? You can type in both variations–19 or nineteen–or you can leave it out altogether to manually filter your results.

“The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” – Ronald Reagan

In your search browser window, you can also type in specific words, but your results may be limited. Say you have over 20,000 search results, which is monstrous, add another word for focus: role women century workplace. Genius! And for keywords synced together–a direct phrase–use quotes around it: “women in workplace.”  Type it in without the period. Search results will show these words exactly as you typed them.

Google can also act as a dictionary. Yep. It has a brain. Type in define: Coquina. Coquina, by the way, is a limestone, sedimentary rock composed of shells. Google it!

** Smith, Robert M. and Associates. Learning to Learn Across the Life Span. (21) California: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990.

*** Smith, Robert M. and Associates. Learning to Learn Across the Life Span. (223) California: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990.

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