Google Alerts Educative Secrets

This is the second post in a series of posts covering the use of some of the most important applications of google in education .After we have talked about igoogle and its use in education and how you can create your own  personalized page using igoogle in this post I will talk about another educative tool from google called google alerts .
Do you want to know what people online say about you , your school , your teacher, administration and your students ?
You can absolutely do that thanks to google alerts .You can keep track of the latest publications about a topic , a celebrity , a product or any other thing .It is a free service from google that “automatically notifies users when new content from news , web , blogs,video and or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the google alerts service” ( wikipedia )

How to set up a google alerts account ?

To start using google alerts you need to :
Go to www.google.com/alerts and fill in the the form on the right hand side of the page as shown in the screenshot above.

• Fill in the search terms bar with the words or topic titles you want to be alerted about ( for instance if students want to stay informed about their school they can just write the name of their school in that box and whenever there is an update it will be delivered right into their inboxes )
• Under “type” you select comprehensive which is the option that will make it possible for you to receive alerts in all forms ( be it a video , blog, news,ect )
• Under “how often” you select once a week or once a day , it depend on how frequently you want to be updated by google alerts but it is generally preferable not to select “ as it happens” in order to prevent your inbox from being flooded with too many emails .
• Under “email length “ select up to 50 results and type in your email address
• Click on “ create alert “ . A confirmation link will be sent to your inbox ; click on it to confirm your subscription and from this moment on google alerts will notify you of any updates concerning the topic you have chosen .

Can I create more than one alert ?

Yes sure , you can create as many alerts as you wish , all you need to do for this is to follow the same procedure as explained above but this time selecting different search terms for each alerte .
Remember , as I have said in my previous post about igoogle , you need to have a google account for this too .In fact all google applications and services necessitate a google account . if you still do not have an account then sign in to open one .
When you access your google alerts page you can see all your alerts in one interface you can even  edit or delete them  .In case your alerts  are not really related to what you want then make sure to make the search terms you provided for your google alerts as much accurate as possible .

 

 

Applications of google alerts in education

Google alerts is really a useful educative tool for both teachers and students .As teachers , you need to introduce it to your students and encourage them to use it just as explained above . they can keep track of each others’ blogs and blogs of students from other countries . they can also use it to track topics they are working on and be informed about their school’s updates and news.