Useful Google Tools from "The Lab"

I came across a couple useful Google tools today while visiting a great site (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/). These would be useful for teachers and students alike – they are pretty cool so check them out!!



Image Swirl - http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

Google Image Swirl organizes image search results based on their visual and semantic similarity and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface. To use Image Swirl, just enter your search term as you would in the regular image search service. The results of your search will be displayed in a grid similar to that with which you're probably familiar. Click any image in the grid a web of more, related, images will appear. Click an image in the web and another web of images will appear.

Educational Use: Images for PowerPoints or to show students examples of concepts. It may also be used as a writing prompt starter.

Google Squared - http://www.google.com/squared

Fetch and organize facts from across the web. Google Squared automatically constructs a table of facts about any category you specify. Google Squared displays the results of a search in a spreadsheet format. This spreadsheet format allows users to quickly compare the results of a search. Users can alter the fields in the spreadsheet to further refine a search. For example, I searched using the term "US Civil War," the results were displayed in a spreadsheet containing the columns "image," "description," "date," and "result." I then eliminated the "result" column and replaced it with "location." The new "location" column displayed results based on location.

Educational Use: Easy organization for students and teachers to compare concepts, people, properties, animals, etc.