Using Google For A Global Perspective

With the simple use of a colon and a country code, we can give our students the gift of a global perspective. Google, and most search engines today, have specific search operations that can be used to refine what a person is specifically looking for.  For example, by typing 'site: gov' or 'site.edu' after keywords, Google will only provide results from government or educational websites. The next best operation is typing a country code after each one of those; for example if I wanted to exclusively search educational websites from Australia, I would type all the keywords followed by 'site:edu.au.' This works for all websites and country codes.

When studying social studies, language arts, or any other subject that requires students to do research, this tool comes in handy by giving students the option to explore other countries' perspectives. For instance, when studying the Vietnam war through Vietnam's perspective, students learn it is actually called the American war from Vietnam's perspective and there are various different personal accounts, stories, facts, and statistics that they might have never known. Looking at the world through multiple different lenses is an important skill for our students to learn, and who better to instill that than teachers. My suggestion for activities regarding this is to give each student or pairs of students a specific country, and have them research the topic from that countries' perspective.  It gives student's the option to inquire and discover something they might have never learned, and in turn, teach their peers about a different perspective. It is so vital when studying history that we learn multiple points-of-view and with this simple operation that anyone can learn, it makes it easy to do so!