Thing #12 The Power of Google

I decided to first play around with Google Trends, because I've heard about it before but never used it.  On Google Trends the two hottest searches for the day (September 10, 2013) were Sons of Anarchy and NASCAR.  I noticed however, that these "trends" of the day were only for the United States so I decided to change the country to Australia.  For the exact same day I found that the two hottest searches in Australia were Under the Dome (a tv show) and Miley Cyrus.

I next decided to view the trends of the search "Michael Jackson" I limited the years of my search from 2004-present (the site does not allow you to see trends prior to 2004) and wasn't surprised to find that the number of searches not only spiked but peaked the year of his death, 2009.  I only performed this search to test the accuracy of the site....


Next I searched Justin Bieber....these were the results

As expected no one even knew of his existence until 2009.  There were literally 0 searches until June of 2009

Lastly I decided to search "education reform" and was saddened to find that the number of searches of these two terms has been in a fairly gradual decline as pictured below.

I guess it true that people are starting to care less and less about education....

Other interesting hot searches from September 10, 2013, broken down into categories,
are pictured below
                                                                     

 

I never knew google had any type of photo sharing program and because manipulating photos with flickr was so much fun I decided to check out Google Plus Photos.  The process of uploading my photos to Google Plus was very similar to the uploading process on Facebook where they ask you to tag the photo and you have the option to share it.  I then decided to edit my photo and loved all the options they gave!  I could have spent hours manipulating photos and know for sure I'll be back on this site!

I think that Google Trends would prove very useful in a History classroom because students could could literally learn the history/popularity of any term from 2004-present!  Again I still don't see much benefit in a photo manipulation site like Google Plus Photos other than in an Art class...