How I will benefit from Google Power Searching

I will benefit from learning about Google Power Searching because I will be able to attain information more efficently. The things I have learned in Google Power Searching will help me do research for school related projects, but also outside of school. Before my family and I go on vacation, I will be able to do research and use Google Books to discover fun things to do at the place I am visiting. This April, I am going to New York City, now I can find out about different restaruants, movies, plays, forms of travel. Google Power Searching will allow me to find out about new things that I otherwise would not have known about. Secondly, Google Power Searching has taught me how to use Google Books. Before this class, I had never even heard of Google Books. Google Books will be helpful in my History and English essays. I will be able to use it to verify quotes and find primary sources. Also, I can use Google Books to preview a book and see if I would want to read it or not. Google Books is definitely going to help the efficency of my research. Control F allows and the search bar in Google Books allows me to find certain words or phrases that are in the book or preview of the book.

What I have Learned

I have learned many new things so far in the Google Power Searching class. The things that I have learned are going to help me with my school work, especially research projects. In Class One, I learned how to narrow my search results through color filter on Google Images. This skill is going to help me because I now know how to easily search for tables, black and white images, and images of a certain color. Knowing this will help me find the picture I want more efficiently. In Class One, I also learned the importance of word order. Before this class, I did not think about what I searched in my query, now I know that word order matters and affects the results that appear on the search page. This new knowledge will help me when I am searching for research, or just going on Google to find something else, like a recipe. In Class Two, I learned that you can use define and then the word you are searching for in your query in order to discover the definition of a word. This new knowledge will help make my research and writing essays more efficient. I will be able to save time by searching for the definition on Google instead of going on Dictionary.com. In Class Two, I also learned that in the left panel of the search results page, you can filter results by different categories. These categories include blogs, discussions, recipes, patents, books, 3D models, scholarly sources, and legal documents. I was surprised to learn that there were so many aspects of Google that I had never learned about or used. These different categories will definitely be useful to me when I am not successful on my Web searches. Lastly, in Class Three, I learned that quotes can be used to search for a phrase. This is very useful to me, because I constantly find myself searching for quotes from books, but not getting good results because the words do not remain in an individual phrase. In Class Three, I also learned that in a query, a minus sign can be used to eliminate certain words from the entire Search results. This is helpful and will make researching much easier and will allow me to attain specific information more quickly. Overall, the things I have learned are going to make a difference in the quality of my research and search results.

Eyes Opened

Some days start horribly. You can’t find the shirt you wanted to wear, your mom forgot to pack your lunch, and the dog sat on and then ate the research project that you spent the whole night on. Life can get busy and overwhelming. Everything moves so fast that we often forget what we like doing and cannot see the beauty of the world we live in. The constant rush of work and life causes us to become stressed and upset as the days go by. It’s almost like you blink and then another year has flown by. I’ve started to understand that life is not meant to be so draining but is meant to be viewed a gift, each day holds many opportunities and blessings. Once I actually realized that life on earth is limited, I began to value and appreciate each new day. One winter morning, absolutely nothing was going right. It was just another Monday morning, living in New England, waking up in total darkness, feet slamming against the cold floor. The whole morning was a blur, everything seemed so dreary. My whole mood changed as I left the house. The red door closing with a slam, the cold wind hitting my face. My eyes looked up to the sky and I stopped thinking about the upcoming week and was able to see the beauty in this magnificent sunrise. The blazing orange sun sat behind trees covered with pure, white snow. A clear blue sky was streaked with rosy pinks and soft yellows. It felt as if my eyes were opened. I was able to put aside my own problems and appreciate the day for what it was and the beauty it held.