Searching with Google

Most people when they need to find something online turn to their favorite search engines for answers. This often means Google and sometimes Bing or Yahoo. These are massive search engines that give you thousands of results, far too many to go through. What ends up happening is you look at only the first couple of pages hoping that something useful is there. However, if you know a little something about searching you can get those useful results closer to the top of the list.

Think carefully about the subject you are trying to find information on and come up with a sentence that describes what you want.

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 Pick out the 2-3 fact carrying words from that sentence to use in your search. 

Look at the difference in the first results.

If you get few (good) results try re-thinking your words. One of the words you picked might not be the one most used by people writing on the subject. From your results find out how most people write about your topic and use their words. You might have to do several searches until you get the right combination.

Now, on to what you actually type. You can get better results by using certain symbols to limit or broaden your search. Let’s look at Google.

When Google does a search it looks not only for your word but for plurals and synonyms. If you do a search for the words nurse and school you will get results for nurse, nursing, nurses, school, and schools.

If you want to stop it from looking for all those other words put a + sign in front of the word, like +nurse and you won’t get all the similar terms.

If you do want it to look for similar and related terms you can put a ~ sign in front of the word, like ~school. Doing this will get you results for not just school, schools, and schooling, but also academy, teacher, and institute.

Search engines don’t generally look for what are called “stop words”. These are common words like and, a, the, but, or. If you want to look for them in a phrase, or if you want to look up words in a specific order, put quotations around your phrase. “And that’s all” will give you that exact phrase. If you search for it without the quotation marks you won’t get the “and” and “that’s” and “all” will be out of order.

If you want to find two words near each other separate them with AROUND(5) which will make sure they are within 5 words of each other. It might look like, storm AROUND(5) damage.

You can combine all these things, like ~storm AROUND(5) +damage. Try ~storm ~damage. Try different words and combinations to see what you get.

When you get the results Google gives you further options to the left side to narrow things down. You can search for images, videos, news, blogs, and more. You can narrow your search to a certain time period, say the last year, or create your own custom date range to only look for things in the last five years. There are other things you can do, like look for translated pages or related searches. You can play with them if you want but the most useful might be the Not Yet Visited option so you can exclude websites you’ve already looked at.

You can also use the Advanced Search Screen to better organize your thoughts.

As a search tip remember that, especially with medical related topics, there is always an organization, foundation, council, or association and their websites are great sources of information. Look over the website to make sure they aren’t trying to push a specific viewpoint. Always ask the questions: Who is paying for this? Who benefits? Why do they exist?  MedlinePlus is a great place to find legitimate associations and foundations.

Flash Drive Re-cap

This is just a little re-cap about using your flash drive correctly.

Once you’ve put it in the USB slot the computer should detect the new hardware and automatically open a dialog box asking you what you want to do.

Click “Open folder to view files”.

Your flash drive folder will open, showing you all the files stored on it.

When you are done using your flash drive, make sure you eject it properly or you risk negatively affecting it. 

Click the little upward facing arrow at the bottom right of the screen and then click on the picture of a USB connection with a green checkmark next to it.

You’ll get a couple of options. Choose to “Eject removable disk”.

When you get the “Safe to remove hardware” message you can pull your flash drive out. If you get an error message saying the device cannot be stopped, make sure all files that have been saved to the flash drive are closed and then try again. You can’t remove your flash drive if a word document that is saved on it is still open.

Brochure page creation exercise

The following are steps for creating a brochure page. This can be modified to create a flyer or handout as well. Normal text steps are the buttons or menus you need to click and instructions in italic are things like writing text, choosing a color, or re-sizing/re-positioning a picture. I'll put my finished product at the end.

Page Layout → Orientation → Landscape → Page Color → Choose Color → Page Borders → Choose Style → Undo (Use arrow at top or press Ctrl + z) → Columns → Three.

Insert → Shapes → Choose a basic shape (I recommend rectangle, rounded rectangle, or oval) → Hold left mouse button down and drag to create a shape on the left side of the page →  Make shape the size you want by pulling on the little circles at the corners. This shape will act as one of the columns on your brochure. → Note that you are now on the Format bar at the top of the page → Shape Fill → Choose color → Shape Outline → More outline colors → Choose color (or choose no outline) → Add Text (This button is at the left of the screen) → Type something → Highlight Text (Click and Drag. Move arrow over text option box that appears.) → Change text font, size, and color as you want. Center text is you want.

Insert → Clip Art → Enter a keyword in the Search for box → Choose a picture (notice you are back on the Format bar only with different options) → Place cursor after text and before picture. Press Enter key until picture is located where you want it. → Click picture once to select it for editing. → In the Format bar, hover the mouse arrow over different Picture Styles to see the effects. Choose one if you like. → Picture Shape → Choose a shape → Undo → Note Picture Border and Picture Effects. Play with them if you like.

Insert → Text Box → Draw Text Box → Hold left mouse button down and drag until you have the desired size within your shape. → Shape Fill → Choose color → Shape Outline → Choose color or no outline → Type text → Highlight text → Use text option box to change text font, size, and color.

Right click outside shape to stop editing inside shape.

Insert → Shape → Choose shape. → Create shape in center portion of page for middle column. → Repeat previous Shape steps.

Insert → Picture → Choose picture from folder and insert. → Fix placement, choose style or customize as you want. Add text above or below as you want.

Insert → Text Box → Simple Text Box →Position → Position in top right with square text wrapping (This is your right side column) → Reposition and resize. (You can right click the box to get the option to remove content control) → Type your text. → Shape fill → Shape outline → Highlight text → Change type font, size, color. → Repeat until you have as many text boxes as you need. Try to make sure you text lines up down the page.

Insert → Clip art → Search for a color → Choose something that looks like a background → Position → Position in Middle right with square text wrapping → Move into position and resize → Customize using picture styles, shape, border, and effects. → Send to Back → Send behind text.

Insert → Clip art → Search for an appropriate keyword. Choose something and insert. → Position → Position to Middle right → Move into place. Organize it among text.

Insert → Blank page.

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Microsoft Word Insert and Picture Format Bars

If you want to be fancy, or need to create a brochure or flyer, you need to get acquainted with the Insert bar. Mixing pictures, clip art, shapes, and text boxes can be a bit of a pain, since if you don't know what you're doing (and even when you do) they tend to behave in ways contrary to your wishes, but it gets easier the more you practice.
Here's a quick review of what you'll most use.

The Insert Bar:

Click for a larger image. Right-click and open in new tab to switch between text and picture.

This allows you to add design elements to your work. You can put in pictures, clip art, charts, shapes that you can use as background or to write in, headers, footers, page numbers, and text boxes.


You can add a simple text box, click the right button on it to get the option to remove content control, and then move it and make it the size you want.


Once you have your design element you can customize it with the format bar. This only appears once you’ve inserted something.

The Format Bar (Picture Tools):

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You can move a shape (or any design element) around by clicking the “Position” arrow on the right and choosing a placement. Once you’ve done that you’re free to move the picture/shape/text box anywhere you want.

If you want to use a picture or shape as background click on the “Send to back” option. I recommend putting in your text first before the background otherwise your picture might disappear.

You can also do picture effects and change the picture border.

The Shape bar is a little different.

The Format Bar (Drawing Tools):

With this you can change the color and outline of the shape, give it a shadow or 3-D effect, rotate it, or set it as background with “Send to back”. You can add text to it as well.

Next post will be a brochure creation exercise. Follow the instructions to get an idea of how everything works. I'll also post a screen shot of what I came up with while using them.

Microsoft Office Word Review

Word is most likely the word processor you will end up using, especially as that's what the school has, so let's review it's features.

The Home Bar.

Click to see larger size.

With this bar you can change the way your text looks.

Either make changes before you type or highlight your text (by holding the left mouse button and pulling down until you reach the end.)

-Where it says “Calibri (Body) is where you can change the font. Click on the little downward facing arrow to look at the menu.

-Where it says “11” is where you can change the size of the text.

-The B will make your text bold. You can also do this by pressing “Ctrl” and “b” at the same time. Press them again to stop writing in bold text.

-The slanted I is for italic text. The shortcut for this is “Ctrl” and “I”.

-The U is for underlining you text. The shortcut is “Ctrl” and “u”.

-The “A” with the red line under it gives you options to change the color of your text.

-The “ab” with the yellow line under it gives you options to change the color of the background behind your text.

-The little lines of text over the word Paragraph let you change where the text aligns.

The one that is highlighted and is standard aligns text to the left. The next puts everything in the middle, and the last to the right.
-If you click the little arrow to the right of the word Paragraph the paragraph menu will pop up. Under the tab Indents and Spacing in the Spacing section is the Line Spacing option. You can set this to Single (this will leave no space between your lines of text) or Double (this leaves a line of space between text). Click Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style if you don't want an extra line of space when you hit the Enter key for a new paragraph.
-The easiest way to delete something is to highlight it (press and hold the left mouse key and move the cursor over the text) and press the Backspace key.

The Page Layout Bar.

This bar changes the page itself rather than anything on it.

You can change the margins of the page if you really want.

You can change the orientation of the page from portrait to landscape. Landscape is good for brochures and signs.

You can add more columns or change the color or the page itself.

You can also add a page border.

Notice up at the top the left facing arrow next to the Save button (the blue disk). That will undo whatever you’ve just done. You can press it as many times as you need to. If you change your mind after undoing something you can press the right facing arrow to put it back in.

Shortcuts:

Ctrl + c is Copy. You can “copy” text or a picture and then “paste” it in the new place.

Ctrl + v is Paste. This adds whatever you’ve copied.

Ctrl + b is Bold.

Ctrl + I is Italics.

Ctrl + u is Underline.

Ctrl + z is Undo.

Ctrl + y is Redo.

Ctrl + n is New document.

Ctrl + s is Save.

Ctrl + p is Print.