Asking Questions and How to Google

We should use both closed and open questions.  Closed questions are typically easy to answer, quick to answer, and they provide facts.  Using closed questions can be helpful if someone just wants a yes or no answer or wants to know, for example, who invented the telephone.  Open questions are also beneficial because they result in more detailed, in depth answers to questions.  They make the responder think and reflect, which can help the questionnaire find out more about the person’s character, but also more about a particular topic.  Open questions can also result in getting someone’s opinions or feelings about situations or topics. Using both closed and open questions can provide a fuller answer including facts, reflections, explanations, and sometimes, opinions.  In a Google Search, people can type in open and closed questions as statements. For example, change the closed question into a statement and say… inventor of the telephone. This will bring up Alexander Graham Bell quickly.  If you want to know an answer to an open question, one could type the question in as a statement, like…  the effects of acidic bodies of water on fish.  If you want to narrow that down to one particular site, you could type that in and then site: .gov if you only want results coming from government sites.

Google Search tips are useful because when typing in some of the tips or operators into that search, Google becomes more efficient at getting the results you’d want.  For example, if you wanted to search for any sites that have the words math or arithmetic, you could use the operator OR in between the words.  Another example is if you want to quickly know a definition of a word, you would just type in define:word.  This is very quick and simple.  Another search tip is that capitalization doesn’t matter, so no need to spend time trying to figure out what needs capitalization when searching for sites.  One other useful tip is the minus sign.  If you want to search for George Washington, but don’t want any results to come up with George Washington University, you could type in George Washington -University.  This will leave out the University term in the search.  As you can see, using Google Search tips and open and closed questions, a researcher would benefit from both because he/she would have the knowledge and tools to more quickly and easily find out what he/she desires.