DIGITAL LITERACY - Search Engines & Google Trends ACTIVITY (Distance Learning)

As a fun way to discuss search engines in a digital literacy unit, students get to explore 'Google Trends' in an engaging lesson and interactive activity that appeals to their own school and specific interests.

Resources are provided as a Google Slide file that guides students through the lesson. To introduce the topic, two videos are integrated into the slideshow that shows two of Google's 'Year in Search' videos that identifies the most "searched" items in a particular year. This slideshow includes 2019 and 2018 (updated). Students find these videos very engaging as many of the items mentioned in the videos are ones that students often remember "googling" themselves! A link to the individual research activity (a Google doc) is provided directly in the slideshow at the end. Once the independent activity is done, you can then go over the information that was discovered by students, as a class, and examine how 'Google Trends' could be a useful resource to individuals, businesses, etc.

UPDATE - The Google slide lesson and Google doc activity now also includes a small focus on the 'Coronavirus Search Trends' which is currently (as of March 2020) being featured on the website.

Let me know how this lesson goes for you - my students loved it and continued to check Google Trends regularly whenever they had spare time throughout the course!