Hey Google, its nice to finally meet you!

 After the class today I felt as though I had been living under a rock for most of my adult life. The search abilities in Google that we were shown today seemed simple, but opened up an entirely new way to narrow down information seeking for me. With a couple more key strokes my mind was blown to the expanded possibilities of additional search options. 

Having the ability to search an event or topic with the perspective of different regions is a big deal from a Social Studies standpoint. This type of literacy will be vital to me and the students I hope to impact. A big part of my lessons will focus on ensuring students are knowledgeable fact finders. I just learned how to do this better for myself and will definitely use these tactics for my students. The new search ability also helps to create some debate and cross-talk among students. They can get different perspectives on a given topic and make arguments or counter arguments for or against a particular viewpoint. I am very excited to practice these digital literacy skills for myself and my future classes.

Additionally, I was shocked at the ability to search for old newspaper articles which are archived in an area of google. The https://news.google.com/newspapers site was a game changer for me for finding information outside of a university online library. I wish I had known about this years ago when I began my academic journey! This is another digital literacy technique that I will try to incorporate into my lessons for my students future benefit. This type of knowledge will only help them further if they decide to continue on to post-secondary schooling. 

The expanded google searching and newspaper archives that are available to anyone and everyone should be shouted from the rooftops. I will make these standard learning in my classes. I can see their immediate benefit to creating more knowledgeable fact-finding participants in our information heavy world.