Tell a Story
A new feature of Google adds considerable excitement to the whole search process with huge overtones for the classroom.  Huge.

One of my favourite albeit condescending application in this realm is “Let Me Google That For You“.  It’s a great answer when you get the question – do you know about …?  from someone who is too lazy to use a search engine for their own purposes.

From Google comes  a new feature.  If you saw the advertisement during the SuperBowl, then you’ve already got a flavour for it.

Head over to Google Search Stories to begin.  In the example below, I used the custom template to create some Google search terms for where you might expect to see any content that I’ve ever created and posted to the internet.  Then, it’s just a matter of picking the appropriate music and let the application do its thing.  The result is a movie that you can post to YouTube.

 

That was amazingly easy to do.  Now, where could you possibly use it in education?

Portfolio
Suppose you are indeed a great creator of content.  Why not use this facility to quickly create a movie to show others where you are and how to get there?  It adds a whole new dimension to the concept of being “Google-able”, doesn’t it?  If you’re not giving back, you’re  - well – hard to Google.

Research Bibliography
I really like this concept.  If  the current project involves elements of student research to find digital artifacts as part of their studies, use this utility to demonstrate to the teacher exactly what search terms that they used to feed their research.  If the students are indeed pulling down articles from various internet resources for their works, why not embed this at the end of the report on the class wiki.  Since the length of the movie created is dependent upon the number of searches created, perhaps a nice side effect is a richer depth of research as they try to find the best resources.

School Website Enhancement
Related to the concept of a personal portfolio, how about a video about your school or organization?  If you’re active and have a dynamic presence in the community, creating content, or want to show off teacher wikis and blog, why not search for them and put together a nice montage suitable for embedding?

It’s a fun web application, to be sure.  But, I think used properly, there could be terrific enhancements to the research and reporting process.

How could you see it working?