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Last week we learned about how search engines work and how to search effectively. We also learned about why it is important to use valid and reliable resources. Especially when doing research for academic purposes. Google has made your lives even easier by creating Google Scholar - a search engine that specifically searches for academic papers.

Task 1:

Read this online article about 5 ways students can use Google Scholar. Write a comment on this post telling everyone which way you think you will use the most and why.

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Image: Flickr, Thomas Leuthard

Here's something that's happened to most college students: It's 20 minutes before your final paper is due, and you haven't written a bibliography yet.

This situation, and everything that precedes it, is going to be more difficult if you don't know about Google Scholar. Google's customized search engine and tool for students and academics of all stripes was created by Anurag Acharya, a former academic who joined Google's web-indexing team in 2000. Scholar allows you to search journals, save sources to your personal library and, yes, get quick citations.

Although Scholar celebrated its 10th anniversary in November, many students still don't know about it unless they talk to a librarian, and the navigation toolbar on the main Google page doesn't link to it. To help you out, just in time for finals, we've put together a quick guide to studying, saving and citing.

Image: Tumblr thethreefates

1. Search for journal articles.

The first thing you need to know about Google Scholar is that it works essentially like a regular ol' search engine - to get the best results, you should be as specific as possible. Scholar is designed to return a combination of the most relevant and most cited pages, meaning you'll get what's been cited most by other academics (which are usually the most informative, reliable sources).

Keep in mind that Scholar can search both the title and article content for search terms, even if the content is locked to subscribers.

Once you've navigated to a results page, you'll see information about the author, publisher and date for each entry. You'll also see the location of the entry (for example, Google Books or JSTOR) and a link that says "other versions," from which you can navigate to other webpages on which the article has appeared. A link on the left side of the page will link directly to the article and indicated its format (HTML, PDF, etc.).

2. Build (and search) libraries.

As you look through the results, you can save articles to your library. Once you add something to the library, you can view a comprehensive info sheet of the article, including the abstract, and put it under a label to organize it with similar sources.

For book entries, click "more," and you'll see a link that reads "Library Search." This link will take you to the Worldcat.org page for that book, from which you can enter your ZIP code and check if you can find the book at your nearest library.

3. Set up alerts.

For students researching current events or developing medical discoveries, keeping up with the latest academic literature adds yet another task to an already difficult project. Scholar gives you the option of setting up alerts when there are new results for a specific search term (such as "Russia Ukraine conflict"), so you can stay updated when there new articles and books publish.

4. Read through case law.

On the Google Scholar homepage, you can choose to search articles of case law. This tool is most helpful for students in law school, but can also be used by high school students studying civics or U.S. government, and college students majoring in history or political science. You can limit your search to decisions from the Supreme Court, as well as search the federal, state and circuit courts.

5. Get quick citations.

Along with the other links under a Google Scholar search result, you'll find the Cite button. A box will pop up with citations in different formats based on the article type, which you can easily copy and paste into a Word document or import into the citation managers that Google links in the box. This is a great feature for students who dread taking more than 10 minutes to complete their bibliographies or works cited.

BONUS: 5 Surprising Facts About Google

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5 smart ways students can use Google Scholar

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Here's something that's happened to most college students: It's 20 minutes before your final paper is due, and you haven't written a bibliography yet. This situation, and everything that precedes it, is going to be more difficult if you don't know about Google Scholar.

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All of you have another elective module either public administration, international relations or public relations.

Task 2:
You are going to use google scholar to help you prepare for your essays that you must complete for your other elective. Follow these steps:

1. Find 2 articles related to your topic and share it with the other students on the padlet attached below. (be sure to consider the relevance, currency and objectivity of the article - don't share anything that isn't worth sharing).

2. Create a Library for your topic in google scholar.

3. Set up an alert for your topic.

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If you ever do the ICDL exam you will be expected to understand the concept of online communities. Online Communities have been around since the beginning of (internet) time.

But what are online communities? Are online communities and social networks the same thing? What are the benefits of online communites? What are the disadvantages of online communities?

Task 3:

Using google and google scholar and find the following information:

1. Definition of online communities
2. Give examples of online communities and why/how they are used.
3. Define the advantages and disadvantages of online communities.
4. Using academic research to support your opinions explain how you think online communities will develop/change/be used in the future.

You can save all your findings in a word document for now. In Task 6 you will find out how you will present this information.

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There are many ways to publish online and nowadays it is not necessary that you have a complex understanding of programming or coding to do so.

Task 4:

Use the internet to help you define and find examples of the following:

1. Blogs
2. Microblogs
3. Webtools
4. Ebooks
5. Vlogs
6. Podcasts

Keep a record of your findings it could be useful for the final exam. Feel free to share any good resources you find in the facebook group. (remember only share valid and reliable sources).

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Nowadays you can create very attractive and interactive online presentations to publish your work. We are going to look at two different webtools that allow us to do this.

1. Prezi
2. Powtoon

Task 5:

Do some basic research on each of these presentation tools and choose which one you would like to learn to use the most.

a) check out the website of each webtool
b) go to youtube and find examples of presentations using Powtoon and Prezi or
c) look at examples on the actual website.

When you have chosen which one you would like to learn to do the most then ask Emma to give you the appropriate tutorial video and watch the video. Each video is around 15-20 minutes long.

Log in for Prezi: dl@hie.mr password: hiem2511
Log in for Powtoon: dl@hie.mr password: hiem2511

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Now you are going to create your very own online presentation that details the information you discovered in task 3.

Task 6

Using the information you gathered and wrote in task 3 create your very own online presentation to share with the class.

To consider:

Do you want to add a commentary? If not can it definitely be understood without commentary?

Do you want to add background music?

Have you referenced all your sources?

Is you presentation clear and easy to understand?

Once you have created your presentation then share the link in our facebook book for everybody to enjoy.

Please watch each other's videos and leave comments. Well done! You've now published online and you've made an amazing online presentation!!