Trends?

Today I learned something really cool. It was one of the most amazing fuctions of the internet I have every seen before. Combining the power of Google with the vastness of information availible on the internet.


The application is called Google trends. All you have to do is select two different words or concepts and type them in to Google seprated by a comma. The trends look at google search word history over a specified time period. When there is a significant spike or decline in hits there is always a new story to go along with the current event.


I decided to try this comparing Charile Sheen and Oprah since in the past year both have been significant public figures in the media. Here is what I have found...

I can see this becoming a very powerful research tool in the classroom. Teachers can not only ask students to look at statistics and make comparissions they can also ask for demographical studies.  Ideas can be focused under different perspectives, and we can see concepts in ways that we may never have considered before.


Underneath the actual trends graph there is a breakdown by location that the search initated and even the language used to search.