Search Stories Makes Documenting Research Fun

The keynote speaker for NCTIES was my friend Ken Shelton. I've known Ken for a few years now and one thing that I know for sure about Ken is that he knows how to design a presentation (more on that in another post). In his keynote, Ken shared a great idea for getting students enjoy documenting the research process instead of groaning about having to document it. Ken's suggestion is to have students create Google Search Story videos.

The Google Search Stories Video Creator allows you to create a short video about the searches that you perform on Google. To create your video you enter your search terms, select some background music, and let the creator render a video for you. Ken showed a video of a search for North Carolina barbecue restaurants. Below is a search story about an Internet-famous wedding dance.



Applications for Education
As mentioned above, having students create short search story videos could be a good way to get them interested in documenting at least a part of the research process.