It’s been a while since I have written a post. Life get’s busy, but I have still had time to discover and relish some excellent sites. I hope you enjoy my top 10 sites of the week (listed in no particular order). It’s good to be back!

1. 50 Resources for Bibliophiles – this article is geared towards antiquarian and rare book collecting. Thanks go out to Richard for sharing this excellent link.
2. Paper and More Box Templates – these marvelous little box templates can be uploaded in a paint program to color and digitally decorate or print them as is and let young artist decorate them with crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.
3. Titan Pad – Bravo and thank you! Titan Pad has rescued EtherPad for collaborative online use…a great opportunity for students who are researching as a group…consider using this free online tool when students are collaborating to create research-based newspapers, presentations, or webquests.
4. Sen Teacher Free Printables – a while back I wrote a post 10 Neat Generators for Teachers. This is a marvelous site that would have been included in that post had I discovered it sooner. The site has generators to make common 3D shapes. a generator to create time worksheets, onset and rime tiles, and much, much more! Don’t miss this site, particularly if you are an educator!
5. Mrs. Waltke’s Literacy Page – a marvelous teacher, Rose Welsh, shared this great site with me as we considered how we could embed SMART technology in her current curriculum. We used the Making and Writing Words activities posted on the site to create a number of Notebook 10 activities that support the Scott Foresman Reading program. The site is rich in resources and well worth a visit if you are teaching younger students. To access the SMARTboard activities visit my school website and download the file at the bottom of the page.
6. Explore – marvelous and inspiring…”a multimedia organization that documents leaders around the world who have devoted their lives to extraordinary causes. Both educational and inspirational, explore creates a portal into the soul of humanity by championing the selfless acts of others.”
7. National Archive Experience – all I can say is WOW! If you enjoy history and would like to take advantage of our National Archives collection in an wonderfully interactive way. Explore randomly by using the shuffle button or use the buttons on the bottom to search more purposefully. This is a fantastic site to share with students as they explore history using historical documents.
8. YouTube: Music Discovery Project – enter the name of a famous musical artist or song and stand back as this YouTube search tool rewards you with several marvelous YouTube videos (and a few surprises you might not appreciate). I don’t know that I would recommend this tool for school use, but it is a great way to see how various video artists use similar songs or music from similar artists to create a video memory.
9. Alphabet Origami - a neat site for Origami enthusiasts…directions for creating Origami letters of the alphabet.
10. What Happened in my Birth Year? – input a date and find out…a great tool for comparing and contrasting years in history or developing historical newsletters.

I have been reading the book 75 Cage-Rattling Questions to Challenge the Way you Work by Dick Whitney and Melissa Giovagnoli. As I read the book and thought about the “cage-rattling” questions that were developed primarily for businesses I realized that many of the questions could be revised and used to help educators think about their schools and classrooms. I will feature one of my revised “cage-rattling” questions at the beginning of each week. Please post your answers to the question of the week using the comment button at the bottom of the post.

Feel free to share the Question of the Week with educators in your building. In fact, you can click on the image above to print a full-page copy of the question. Enjoy!

A couple of years ago I did some extensive research for a workshop I presented called Search Strategies. I came across that material as I was purging and organizing some of my files. As I read through the material from my “old workshop” I realized there were some neat shortcuts and Google tips I have not used in a while. My inquisitive mind (and procrastination when it comes to cleaning files) often leads me from one thing to another so of course, I also took time to see if there were some new tips and strategies that had cropped up in recent years. Below, you will find some of the interesting tips and strategies I rediscovered from the past and some new tips I discovered this evening. I’m sure you will recognize several of them. Feel free to share additional Google tips using the comment link at the bottom of the post.

1. The (-) and (+) Operators
   Use the (-) or (+) operators to inform the Google search engine as to whether to include or exclude a word when performing a search.  For example, if you search for King Henry I your results would point you to information about all the King Henry’s not just King Henry I.  The query King Henry +I will give you the results you desire (since “I” is one of the common words filtered from a regular search).  Likewise, if you perform a search using the (-) symbol you will be able to search pages that do not include a particular term.  The query -red ants will give you results about ants other than red ants.
2. Phrase Searching
   Put quotes around phrases if you want to search for words that appear together.  For example, the query “Middle School” will look for webpages that show the words Middle School next to each other.
3. The ~ Operator
   The tilde (~) operator takes the word immediately following it and searches both for that specific word and for the word’s synonyms. It also searches for the term with alternative endings. Remember you should not have a space between the “~” and the query word. For example, ~fast matches “fast,” “faster,” “fastest,” as well as “quick” and “speedy.”
4. The .. Operator
   The .. operator specifies that results should contain numbers in a range. Remember you should not have a space between the “..” and the two numbers. For example, the search query troll doll $10..$50 will look for trolls that cost between $10.00 and $50.00.
5. The * Operator
   The * Operator serves as a placeholder for a word or more than one word. For example, “You * my life“ tells Google to find pages containing a phrase that starts with “You” followed by one or more words, followed by “my life.”
6. Identify Local Time for Any City in the World
   To learn what time it is in a particular city type the word “time” followed by the name of the city. For example, the query time Paris will give you the current time in Paris, France and Paris, Maine and Paris, Illinois.
   
7. Define a Word
   Define any word by simply typing the word “define” followed by the word you need defined. For example, define catapult will provide a definition for the word “catapult.”  You can also use the phrases “what is” or “what are” followed by a word or phrase.
8. Money Conversion
   How strong is the dollar? Use the query convert dollar to yen (or choose a different currency) to find out. By the way, Google cannot guarantee the accuracy of the exchange rates used by the calculator, but you will get a good general idea regarding conversion rate when you you use this feature.
9. Time Conversion
   How many hours are there in a fortnight? Use the query hours per fortnight to find out.
10. Weather
    What is the weather like in Madrid? Use the query weather Madrid to find out. You can also type “weather” followed by the city and state, U.S. zip code, or city and country. You will learn the current weather and will also be able to see the weather forecast (see screenshot below):
    
11. Searching within a Specific Website
    You can search for a text in a specific website. To search my blog for a past column I wrote for speech teachers I would use the following query “speech teacher” site:http://farroutlinks.net/blog. Notice there are no spaces before or after the colon.
12. Searching Based on File Type
    You can search for matching keywords inside a file type. If I wanted to find .pdf files with the word “paraprofession” in them my query would be paraprofessional filetype:pdf. My returns would only show .pdf files with the word paraprofessional. Notice there are no spaces before or after the colon.
13. Google Calculator
    The Google search query form also features numerous calculation capabilities. The features are too numerous to detail in this post, but you can access a marvelous Google Calculator Cheat Sheet posted by Nancy Blachman for full details.
14. Booking Flights
    Learn how much it would cost to fly from one city to another using a query that includes city to city.  For example, if I wanted to book a flight from Rochester to San Francisco my query would be Rochester to San Francisco (see sample below)
    
15. Travel Conditions
    Learn about delays and weather conditions at a US airport. For example, if I wanted to know about delays at the Rochester, NY airport my query would be ROC airport (use the 3-digit code for an airport unless there is more than one major airport in the city. If your city has more than one major airport, include the airport name as well as the city in your query.)
16. Linked Pages
    Learn what pages are linking to a particular site. For example, if you I want to know what sites are linking to this blog my query would be link:http://farroutlinks.net/blog. Notice there are no spaces before or after the colon.
17. Intitle
    When you type “intitle:” at the beginning of a query word or phrase  you only see search results that show that criteria in the titles of Web page returns.  For example, if you type intitle:Red Riding Hood all search results will feature “Red Riding Hood” in the title bar of each page return.
18. Intext
    When you type “intext:” a search is only performed on the body text of webpages, ignoring titles, links, etc. This is a good search to perform if your search criteria might commonly occur in a URL address.  For example,  intext:php will help you find the term .php in text instead of returning a myriad of sites that include .php in their web address.
19. Phone Numbers
    Look up phone numbers using the term phonebook:  or phone: followed by the name of the person you are trying to locate.  You can also use the term rphonebook: to look for residential phone numbers.  Your query would look like phonebook:Robert Farr or rphonebook:Robert Farr or phone:Robert Farr.  Notice there are no spaces before or after the colon.  You can also use the query phone followed by a phone number to learn who the phone number belongs to.  For example phone:607-652-1200 will tell you the name of the person or organization that uses that phone number.  The phone function appears to only work for phone numbers listed in phone books.
20. Movie Reviews and Showtimes
    I found this tip very handy!  Look for movie reviews and showtimes for movies in your area using the query movie: followed by the name of your city and state.  Your query would look like movie: Oneonta, NY
21. Local Food and Restaurants
    I can’t believe I have not used this search before!  To look for local restaurants simply query the type of food you desire, followed by a comma, followed by your city and state.  A sample query  for pizza in my area would look like pizza, Oneonta, NY.  Search results feature restaurant names, phone numbers, websites, addresses and a mapquest.  A sample screenshot follows:
    
22. Track Packages
    Waiting for a package from USPS, UPS, or FedEx?  Simply type your tracking number in the Google Search box to link to information about your delivery. Query results will look similar to the screenshot shown below:
    
23. Stocks
    Look for stock quotes using stocks: followed by the ticker symbol. For example, if you wanted to know how your IBM stock was doing you could type stock:IBM or stocks:IBM to see a trend chart and brief synopses of how the stock did during the last day of trading. Notice, this function will not work if you include spaces before or after the colon. A sample screenshot follows:
24. Specific Searches
    Google has anumber of specific searches that make it easy to search within blogs, news, books, and much more.  Check out some of the following searches:
    • Blog Search
    • Book Search
    • Catalogs
    • Code Search
    • Directory
    • Finance
    • Images
    • Local/Maps
    • News
    • Patent Search
    • Product Search
    • Video

You can find even more searches and features  when you visit the Google Products Page. I also suggest that you use Google’s Advanced search feature if you can’t remember some of the shortcuts included in this post.  Another excellent site is Soople, a visual interface that makes many of the “specialized” features of Google more user-friendly (especially the calculator features).