One of Google’s less popular and most useful tools is Google Alerts.
Google Alerts allows you sign-up for e-mail notifications related to any search term. I use it, for example, to track any mentions of “Mathew Needleman” (my name) or “Matthew Needleman” (the popular mispelling of my name). It’s a narcissist’s dream. But aside from the big head it may give you, it’s a good idea for any teacher to track their public persona, check for fake Myspace pages, etc.
Bloggers should also set alerts for their blogs (I find it’s more reliable than technorati for finding incoming links) and presenters should set up alerts for their presos to find out when they’re being talked about.
Knowing how to use Google well can also allow you to customize your searchers. For example, when searching for Paradigm speakers, I set an alert to search for:
paradigm site:craigslist.com
to alert me whenever Paradigm speakers were listed on Craigslist (hence the “site:” part of the search term.
In the classroom, you could use this to search for particular topics related to your curriculum. For example, searching for any timely references to fossils, physics, or medicine that may show up in particular news sources.
The alternative is to continually launch google and keep searching for this or that. Google alerts allows you to find this information instantaneously and never miss out.
For more information, see Google’s Alert’s Support Info. and Google Cheat Sheet to learn to search smarter.
What do you use Google Alerts for?
Update: Google Alerts sent me an alert about this post within 2 hours of me writing it:
Google Alerts « Creating Lifelong Learners
By Mathew Needleman
I use it, for example, to track any mentions of “Mathew Needleman” (my name) or “Matthew Needleman” (the popular mispelling of my name). It’s a narcissist’s dream. But aside from the big head it may give you, it’s a good idea for any …
Creating Lifelong Learners – http://creatinglifelonglearners.com
[…] The “Creating Lifelong Learners” blog has a good suggestion for school employees to use ‘Google Alert’ to search for their name. I use it for most members of my family and have found a few errors which were then corrected. The posting is below or you can access the blog site by clicking here. […]
Thank you for bringing this tool to my attention.
I’ve set up a number of alerts, which now monitor my school’s Wikipedia page, and appearances of my own name, and a variety of other combinations of my name, my blog, my twitter feed, and so on. It’s proving pretty useful for managing my digital identity and helping me keep track of what’s being said about me and my school online.
This kind of tool, and this kind of digital management, is going to become a lot more important in the years to come. We’re all going to have to be a lot more flexible and light-footed, and keeping Google Alerts running is definitely part of my current management strategy.