Google’s Wonder Wheel

This weekend, one the students in my EDTE611 Introduction to Educational Technologies (Roxanne M) introduced me to a feature of Google called Wonder Wheel.  To use it you have to enter a term  into the search field first & click on search:

When Google returns the first set of results, click on “Show options” beneath the search field.

A list of options appears on the left and “Wonder Wheel” is near the bottom. Click on it.

Here was the Wonder Wheel for the “education” search. You can see that education is in the centre and there are thematic/topic/subject nodes around it. The “hits” from the search term appear to the right of the “wonder wheel” and further sorting options appear on the left.

Click on one of the nodes, like “articles on education” and that node becomes the central one with additional themes/topics/subject branching off it. To the left, the links change to reflect the change in search terms.

This is an excellent visual tool to aid students in narrowing searches.

Thanks to Roxanne for showing this to me & the class.