How to search within documents, web pages, and spreadsheets is one of the first things that I teach to students at the start of a new semester or new school year (for year-long courses). It’s a simple thing that can lead to more efficient use of time spent on research. Over the weekend a reader emailed me for clarification on how her students could search within web pages on their tablets and phones. I recorded this short video to demonstrate how that is done.
Video – How to Search Within Desktop and Mobile Pages
Applications for Education
Searching within a large web page, a document, or a spreadsheet can be a good way for students to find small pieces of important information residing within them. For example, students conducting genealogical research may come across PDFs of scanned journals. By using CTRL+F or the “search within” function students can quickly determine if a particular name appears in the document and where it appears in the document. Another good use of searching within a page is in computer science when students need to locate one small piece of code in a large page of code.
Enroll in my self-paced course about search to learn even more about search strategies students need to know.
