Every couple of months, Google yourself.  Go to Google and in the Search field, enter the name you normally use, and put it in quotes, like this:     ”Fran Lo”    This way Google searches on your name, not on just your first name and just your last name; you’ll you have fewer entries to look at.  You might also want to do a search like:  facebook “my name”    or    myspace  “my name”     You can do this in just a few minutes.

You will be amazed at how many people around the world  have your exact name.  And you may discover something a student has posted about you without your consent.  Because if kids can do stupid things, kids will do stupid things.

Then look into http://scholar.google.com .

You can search academic sources such as theses, abstracts, peer-reviewed papers, books from a variety of sources including universities, academic publishers and professional societies.  You can even restrict your search to specific subject areas in advanced search.

This may be a resource that is worth exploring.
   Fran

Here are some of the directions (from http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html):

“Each Google Scholar search result represents a body of scholarly work. This may include one or more related articles, or even multiple versions of one article. For example, a search result may consist of a group of articles including a preprint, a conference article, a journal article, and an anthology article, all of which are associated with a single research effort.  Grouping these articles allows us to more accurately measure the impact of research and to better present the different research efforts in an area.
 
“Each search result contains bibliographic information, such as the title, author names, and source of publication. One set of bibliographic data is associated with the entire group of related articles and is our best estimate at the representative article for the group. This bibliographic data is based on information from the articles in the group, as well as on citations to these articles from other scholarly works.”

                Has a student’s written work suddenly and spontaneously become sophisticated and fluent?  Is part of the paper the student’s typical writing, and the middle is suddenly error-free?  Are you suspicious?

                One quick and easy way to check if the work was borrowed from the Internet is to “google” some of the paper.  Here’s how.

1.        Identify a sentence or phrase that makes you suspicious.

2.       In Google, www. google.com, in the search box, type in that phrase.  You may have better luck if you “put quotation marks around the phrase.”  Don’t do a whole paragraph – a sentence or long phrase will do.

3.       Look at the results.  Do you see that very phrase or sentence?  Do you see still more of the suspicious report or essay?  Is much of your student’s essay or report the same as what you found via Google?

4.       Print down the Internet page with the copied material.  Highlight or otherwise mark it.

5.       Mark the offending material in your student’s work.  If they are the same, or virtually the same, you have the necessary information to document the problem and take action.

Sad we have to do this, but this provides us with a teachable moment, doesn’t it?

Fran

                Here’s how. 

First, go to www.news.google.com 

Here, you can perform your search.  For example, I wanted to see if there were any recent articles about To Kill a Mockingbird, since I’m teaching that novel.  When I searched on the title, (”to kill a mockingbird” put in quotes so I didn’t receive articles about killing and mockingbirds) I found news articles and blog postings to look at.  One important note here:  make the search specific.  If I search on something too general – “death penalty” – I’ll get much more than I want.  Use more keywords to narrow the search.  For example:  race  “death penalty” 

But I’d also like to know when new information is posted, so I click on News Alerts (over to the left of the search results).  This allows me to set up a Google Alert that will come to me once a day, once a week, or as the stories are posted – my choice.  I can also choose just straight news, but I’ve chosen comprehensive so that I get everything possible.

Will I get some junk?  Sure, but I’ll also get some items I might easily have missed. 

Once I click on Create Alert, I’ll be told there’s one more step to take.  I’ll be told that a verification email has been sent to my email address.

                When I get that confirmation email, I’ll follow the directions – click on the link to Verify this Google Alert Request – and this will confirm my request.  (This has become a standard practice due to prank Alerts people have set up for others.)  This part of the email will look something like this.   

         Verify this Google Alert request:  http://www.google.com/alerts/verifyxxxxxxxx

 So I’ll click on this link.

The time may come when I don’t want this Alert anymore.  Then, at the bottom of the alert, I click on “remove alert,” and they’ll stop sending it. 

                I can set up as many different Alerts as I want, so I can follow many different topics at once.

                I’ve set it up, and now I can just check my email, which I do anyway, and see what’s new on my topic.  Easy, no?

                Google and Yahoo both are out to make a buck, so not surprisingly, they put their advertisers on top of any search list.  They also use other algorithms that influence placement on the list. Wouldn’t you like to do searches without this bias?

                Try using a metasearch engine.  These search other search engines.  For example, try out www.dogpile.com or www.cactisearch.com .  These are just as fast as Google, but provide a filter that can bring up more valuable websites. This excerpt from a dogpile search shows which search engines identified this link. Both Google and Yahoo put Wikipedia’s link higher for this same search. (Wikipedia allows the public to change materials posted there,  so its contents can be questionable.)

                Also, if you like your information displayed more visually than just a list, try www.clusty.com which displays your search results in groups. 

               Or www.mooter.com which displays your search results as a web or cluster. 

                Finally, if you’d really prefer to use plain old English, rather than using keywords, try out www.brainboost.com (the same as www.answers.com/bb ).  You may have to rephrase your question a few times before you get your answer, or it may not work at all, but it may be worth a shot.

                Happy browsing!