Did you know that, besides searching, Google can carry out a variety of simple tasks in daily life — making 21st Century connected life easier or at least a bit quicker? Amaze your children or students by trying out and sharing a few of these Google bells and whistles. A few of the tasks may also support learning activities.
- Use Google as a timer by typing set time to 24 minutes.
- Find a movie release by typing the name of the movie and the word release: e.g., Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel release.
- Check out the sunrise and sunset times by typing sunrise in [town or city].
- Get the weather forecast by typing forecast [town or city].
- Get a definition by typing define [word here].
- Figure out a tip by typing tip calculator.
- Get songs by groups you like by typing songs by the [group name].
- Convert measurements by typing convert and the units that you want to convert to: e.g., convert 3 yards to meters.
- Find books by a certain author by typing books by [author’s name].
- Get a definition by typing define [word here].
Check out even more!
- Have you missed some of the Google Doodles? Get them back to the late 1990s by typing Doodles.
- Are you trying to find something that’s buried on a website? Try typing the website name plus what you are looking for: e.g. GDS.org Marti Weston. Note: You do not need the entire web address.
- Exclude certain things in a search by typing the topic, a space, a minus sign, and the item to be excluded: e.g., cats -musical
- Use quotations around specific words if you want to results to preserve word order: e.g., “Marti Weston” This gets rid of Google searches that find Marti and Weston and just gives you sites where Google finds “Marti Weston.”
- Turn on Google safe search in a moment by typing the words safe search.
- Compare products, e.g., to compare video downloading sites type Netflix vs amazon prime. I also tried comparing various appliances.
- Flip a virtual coin by typing flip a coin.
- Quickly find customer service phone numbers by typing customer service [name of company]: e.g., Customer service Bank of America
- Get right to a Google image’s original site simply by dragging the picture to the search bar.
- Make voice searches. Check for device specific instructions.
Media! Tech! Parenting! 