Trending December 2023 # A 4 Step Approach To Planning Collaborative Experiential Learning # Suggested January 2024 # Top 15 Popular

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Teachers can guide high school students to be active participants in their learning by having them work together on authentic tasks.

We know that students learn from action and reflection. Why is it, then, that so many classrooms treat students as passive recipients rather than active agents?

School can be so much more than predictable lectures and routine tasks. But shifting what students experience can be challenging for teachers. When students are positioned as active players in their learning experience—through authentic projects, student-led inquiries, team challenges, and experiential learning—educators forfeit much of the control, predictability, and comfort they may be accustomed to.

To navigate the challenges of relinquishing control, educators can think about four phases of planning and facilitating experiential collaborative learning experiences and address seven questions as they design and facilitate learning.

Phase 1: Determine the Purpose

Establish learning goals: What are the goals for student learning?

Consider the key knowledge, skills, mindsets, and dispositions that represent the learning goals for the experience. These goals may extend beyond traditional content knowledge goals and into more sophisticated disciplinary practices, such as historical inquiry or mathematical argumentation, as well as goals related to social and emotional mindsets and skills, such as engaging in a productive collaboration with peers and making personal connections to the topic.

Only by getting clear with these goals is it possible to make principled and effective design and facilitation choices later on. After all, different learning goals will require different design choices, different criteria for when a teacher should intervene (or not), and different reflection questions and supports.

Phase 2: Establish the Context

Keep it real: What’s the authentic experience that provides the context for learning?

Teachers can begin to design an authentic experience by considering the various authentic elements of the experience, including the role that students will take on, the problem they will explore, the personal connections they’ll make, the product they’ll produce, and the impact they’ll have. For example, students can take on the role of a scientist as they observe the natural phenomenon of ice melting while placed on different surfaces, design investigations to test their hypotheses, and produce real scientific findings to share with others.

Design for collaboration: How will the experience support and encourage students to collaborate?

Consider a civics class where student groups are tasked to research a specific topic and prepare a presentation for the class. While this sort of group project follows a familiar structure, students may not see how a group effort would benefit their work, other than delegating different parts of the project to different members of the team. Now consider a project that is designed with collaboration in mind. In this case, students must work together to collectively define a problem of local community concern; research, explore, and analyze options for how to address the problem; reach a consensus on which option to pursue; and then engage in civic activities to promote or implement their solution. If teachers expect students to collaborate effectively, they need to be mindful that they are actually designing group-worthy tasks.

Phase 3: Orchestrate the Experience

Cultivate collaboration: What structures and supports will encourage equitable collaboration?

Intervene intentionally: When and how will I intervene in ways that support student learning?

Imagine a group of students struggling to reach consensus on a key decision for their team project. With students’ frustration levels beginning to rise and their collaborative efforts beginning to break down, the teacher must decide whether or not to intervene. The teacher may closely observe the team to try to decipher whether the struggle is productive or not in relation to the primary learning goals. For example, if one of the learning goals is for students to build their capacity to synthesize multiple perspectives into a proposal, this struggle may in fact be a core component of the learning experience.

When teachers do intervene, they should always strive for capacity-building interventions, not enabling interventions. In other words, does the teacher’s intervention build students’ capacity to solve similar problems in the future, or does the intervention build students’ reliance on the teacher? For instance, the teacher in the example above could offer the team a consensus-building protocol and support the students to use it themselves, rather than the teacher stepping in and taking over the group’s process.

Students’ collaborative efforts may also be derailed by harmful power dynamics or troubling patterns of participation. Many of these patterns frequently occur along racial, gender, language, or other lines of difference. These challenges are clearly destructive to student learning and thus require thoughtful and assertive interventions by the teacher.

Phase 4: Facilitate the Debrief

Analyze and reflect: How will students reflect on their experience to surface big ideas?

Reflection is the process through which students make meaning of their experiences. Students can develop emerging intuitions and ideas that can be formalized and stabilized with the support of the teacher.

For example, while reflecting on a science project, students may develop some inclinations about the limitations of their investigation. These reflections can be the foundation from which the teacher helps students build their understanding of significant concepts within the field of science, such as limitations of experimental designs and the validity and reliability of scientific findings. The teacher’s role is to help students articulate and translate these emerging inclinations into more formalized understandings by offering additional context, providing definitions of concepts, and supporting students to make connections between new ideas and the things they already know.

Teachers can consider the types of reflection protocols and questions that are most likely to support students to see critical aspects of their experiences and then make sense of them in ways that produce powerful insights.

Transform insights into implications: How will students transform their new understandings into actionable next steps?

Once students have reflected on their experiences and deepened their understanding of big ideas, they’re ready to look forward. How will their insights and ideas influence the way they think, feel, and act in the future?

Consider an English language arts project where students reflect on the effective use of various narrative techniques as well as aspects of the collaborative writing process. The teacher can now support students to look forward and consider implications for their future writing projects. Reflection allows students to build a bridge from the present experience to their future endeavors.

While we as teachers may not always have an immediate and thoughtful response to each question above, simply posing these questions can help direct our attention toward important considerations while planning and teaching. As with all complex endeavors, engaging in this process with colleagues can enrich the process, and students benefit when their learning experiences reflect the thoughtful planning of a team of educators bringing multiple perspectives, ideas, and approaches to the table.

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Enumerate() In Python: A Step

In Python, the enumerate() function associates list elements with an index. The most notable use case for the enumerate() function is to create a for loop with an index in Python. Instead of manually updating an index, the enumerate() function takes care of that.

For example, let’s print a list of names and their corresponding indexes:

names = ["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"] for position, name in enumerate(names): print(f"{name}: {position}")

Output:

Alice: 0 Bob: 1 Charlie: 2

This is a comprehensive guide to the enumerate() function in Python. You will learn what problems the enumerate() function solves. Besides, you’ll understand what the enumerate() function does and what is an enumerate object.

Let’s start by looking at the issues that come with traditional for loops.

Problems with For Loops in Python

In Python, a for loop performs a collection-based iteration. The loop assigns the next iterable element to a temporary looping variable for each iteration. This sounds fancy but it’s what you’ve probably already seen countless times:

letters = ["A", "B", "C"] for letter in letters: print(letter)

Output:

A B C

In this example, the for loop goes through the letters in the list. It assigns each letter to the temporary looping variable letter with which you can access each letter in the list one by one.

But what if you’d also like to access the index of the letters in the list?

To do this, you need to create a separate variable you update during the iteration:

letters = ["A", "B", "C"] index = 0 for letter in letters: print(letter, index) index += 1

Output:

A 0 B 1 C 2

The common problem with keeping track of an index manually is forgetting to update it.

letters = ["A", "B", "C"] index = 0 for letter in letters: print(letter, index)

Output:

A 0 B 0 C 0

This piece of code keeps the index at zero because you forgot to update it at the end of each iteration. Even though in this situation, it’s clear to see what causes the problem, it can be hard to track it down in a more complex code project.

This is where the built-in enumerate() function helps.

The enumerate() Function in Python

In Python, the enumerate() function associates an index with each list element. It takes a list as an argument and returns an enumerate object with index, and value pairs.

Using enumerate is easy. Just call enumerate() function by passing a list as an argument.

enumerate(values)

This return an enumerate object that has each list element associated with an index (that starts at 0 by default)

The best way to learn how to use the enumerate() function is by examples.

Example

In the previous example, you learned a common bug that can occur when looping through lists with an index.

With the enumerate() function, this problem is gone. The enumerate() function automatically assigns an index to each list element. Moreover, you need less code and the overall code readability improves.

For example, let’s print the indexes of the letters in a list:

letters = ["A", "B", "C"] for index, letter in enumerate(letters): print(letter, index)

Output:

A 0 B 1 C 2 Enumerate() Return Value

Let’s talk about the return value of the enumerate() function. As opposed to what you thought, the return value is not a list of index, value pairs. Instead, it’s a special enumerate object that consists of the index, value pairs.

For example, let’s enumerate a list of names and print the result:

names = ["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"] names_with_index = enumerate(names) print(names_with_index)

Output:

This is the textual representation of the enumerate object that the enumerate() call returns. If you need to, you can convert the enumerate object to a list with the built-in list() function.

But you do not necessarily have to do this. Instead, you can loop through the enumerate object just like a list in Python. This is because an enumerate object is iterable object that supports for loops.

How to Start enumerate() from Non-Zero Value

By default, the enumerate() function starts indexing at 0 because, in Python, the indexing starts at 0.

But sometimes this is not what you want. For example, if you’re printing the positions of people in a queue, you don’t want to start at 0 but 1 instead.

The naive solution would just be to add or subtract value from the index. But this is not the most Pythonic way to do it.

This is when you can specify the optional argument, start, in the enumerate() function call.

enumerate(values, start=index)

For example, let’s print the names of persons in a queue associated with their position on the line by starting the indexing at 1:

names = ["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie"] for position, name in enumerate(names, start=1): print(f"{name}: {position}")

Output:

Alice: 1 Bob: 2 Charlie: 3 Enumerate() Is Not Only for Lists

So far you have worked with lists and enumerate(). But it is good to know you are not restricted to using it on lists only.

In fact, you can call it on any iterable type, such as a tuple or a string in Python.

Example 1: Tuples and enumerate()

For example, let’s call the enumerate() function on a tuple of names:

names = ("Alice", "Bob", "Charlie") names_with_index = enumerate(names) print(tuple(names_with_index))

Output:

((0, 'Alice'), (1, 'Bob'), (2, 'Charlie'))

The behavior of this example is exactly the same as if you called enumerate() on a list.

Example 2: Strings and enumerate()

Similar to how tuples and lists are iterables in Python, so is a string.

This means you can also call enumerate() on a string. When called on a string, the enumerate() function associates each character of the string with an index.

For example:

word = "Hello" for idx, char in enumerate(word): print(idx, char)

Output:

0 H 1 e 2 l 3 l 4 o Conclusion

Today you learned what the enumerate() function does in python.

The enumerate() function assigns an index for each element of an iterable, such as a list.

Using enumerate() is useful when you want to keep track of the index of the elements of an iterable. With enumerate() you don’t need to manually keep track of the loop index.

Thanks for reading. I hope you find it useful.

Happy coding!

How To Use Tiktok For Business: A Step

TikTok for business is a whole social marketing discipline unto itself. Learn our top steps to get started now.

TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users. It’s the place to see and be seen, which means ample opportunity for businesses to engage with audiences in a whole new way by tapping into trending topics and hashtag challenges, experimenting with TikTok live streams, and creating compelling content with dynamic editing tools and trending sounds.

Read on to learn how to use TikTok for business — from setting up an account from scratch to measuring your success.

(To be clear, this article is about using TikTok to market your business in organic and paid ways and not exclusively about the “TikTok for Business” platform. If you’re looking for intel on TikTok for Business specifically, head here!)

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How to use TikTok for business Step 1: Get a TikTok Business Account

If you’ve already got a personal TikTok account, it’s easy to switch over to a Business Account: just skip right to step 3.

1. Download and open the TikTok app.

2. Create a new personal account. You can use your email or log in with your Google, Twitter, or Facebook account.

3. Tap Profile in the lower right corner, then hit the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top right corner.

4. Tap Settings and Privacy.

5. Tap Account.

6. Tap Switch to Business Account.

7. Now, pick the category that best describes your brand and tap Next.

8. Add an email address to your profile.

And that’s it! Congrats on your new TikTok Business Account!

Step 2: Create a winning TikTok strategy

Even if you’re a whiz at Instagram or Facebook marketing, it’s important to remember that TikTok is its own beautiful, chaotic beast that requires a specific game plan. And building that game plan starts with gathering information.

Get to know TikTok

Before you build a TikTok strategy, you need to get to know the platform inside and out. Get familiar with TikTok: spend time browsing through the videos on the For You page. Play around with the editing features, filters, and effects. Spend a few hours losing yourself in the infinite variations of whatever the latest dance craze is.

Understand the TikTok algorithm

The TikTok algorithm is constantly evolving, but you’ve gotta start somewhere. Read up on how TikTok ranks and distributes videos and just what trending videos have in common.

This quick video about TikTok hashtag strategy is going to be helpful viewing, too:

Brush up on your TikTok vocab

TikTokers speak a different language—one that’s constantly evolving. Words and emojis have different meanings. (e.g., 💀=😂). Trying too hard to emulate this digital slang reeks of “hello, fellow kids” energy (and may not be a fit for your specific brand voice!), but understanding common phrases, tropes, and usage can help you avoid looking too out of touch.

For starters, learn about how certain emojis are used on TikTok.

Learn about the key players

At this point, TikTok stars have parlayed their fame into not just lucrative sponsorships but also reality shows, movie roles, and business ventures. These are the characters around which the TikTok world revolves, but your industry or niche likely has its own power players. Keep your eye on those rising stars… like Sengalese-Italian content creator Khaby Lame, with his 153 million followers.

@khaby.lame

Let’s see if you guys can DUET with me!! I love the new Pixel7! I will repost all duets with me on my iG Stories🤯 @googlepixel #BroughttoyoubyGoogle #teampixel

♬ suono originale – Khabane lame

Identify your target audience

Before you dive into making your first video, know your audience. While TikTok is extremely popular with teenagers and Gen Z, a wide range of demographics have fallen in love with the app.

Where does your target market overlap with TikTok users? Or is there a new or unexpected audience to reach here? Once you’ve got a good grasp on who you’re talking to, the content planning can begin.

Scope out your competitors

Is your business nemesis already on TikTok? Watch what they’re doing to get a sneak peek of what’s working and what’s not with your shared audiences.

TikTok influencers or creators may fall into the category of “competition” here on the app, too, so don’t rule them out as sources of inspiration or information, either.

Set goals and objectives

Once you’ve compiled all this intel, it’s time to set some goals. Your TikTok strategy should establish what you hope to achieve on the platform.

A good place to start is with your business objectives: how can TikTok help you accomplish them? Try applying the SMART framework to ensure your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

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Plan out a loose content calendar

A social media content calendar ensures you don’t miss important dates and allows you enough time for creative production. A social media scheduler like Hootsuite can even help you pre-load important content so it goes up on TikTok at the optimum time. (More on that later!)

Look for opportunities to capitalize on holidays or events or develop themes or series that can guide your creativity. Creating content pillars—topics or themes—can help focus your brainstorming and make sure your posts align with your overall brand goals.

That being said, trends come and go fast on TikTok. What’s cool one day is cheugy the next, so it’s important to also plan for the unplannable. When you see a trend that’s a good fit for your brand on TikTok, jump on it and never look back.

Keep the aesthetic authentic

According to a 2023 study by Marketing Science, 65% of TikTok users agree that professional-looking videos from brands feel out of place or odd on TikTok.

Of course, having clear audio and decent lighting makes a video more enjoyable for the viewer, but using your phone in a bright and quiet space will do the trick just fine and fit with the authentic TikTok aesthetic. Even Taylor Swift shoots her TikToks fast-’n’-loose… and you know she’s got access to audio equipment.

Step 3: Optimize your TikTok profile

You’ve only got a few lines and one opportunity to share a link, but your TikTok profile is basically your digital storefront, so do it up right.

Be particular about your profile photo

Make sure your profile photo looks good and represents your brand. Ideally, it should connect your TikTok account visually to your other digital platforms, using the same logo or colors to make it clear this is part of the same family as your website, Instagram, and Facebook.

Keep your bio short and sweet

With only 80 characters to work with, your TikTok bio needs to cut to the chase and include a CTA. Use an emoji if it’s appropriate for your brand voice: it can add personality and save on the character count. Win-win.

Here are 130 TikTok bio ideas to inspire.

Pick your URL wisely

Should it direct users to your ecommerce site, a specific landing page, your other social accounts, or a current blog post? That all depends on your strategic goals.

Get verified

Verified TikTok accounts benefit from increased exposure and a certain amount of cred. A verification badge is basically a stamp of approval from the TikTok overlords, one that can help give your brand an aura of authority and confirm its authenticity.

You don’t have to be super famous to get one, and lots of businesses (even paint companies) have them. You can request to be verified through the Settings and Privacy menu, but many sources believe there are other actions you can take to speed up the process and earn that beautiful blue check.

Read more about how to get verified on TikTok here, or watch the video recap (you’re busy, we get it!):

Step 4: Create content that people will want to watch

There’s no secret recipe for making a successful TikTok video, but there are some good rules of thumb to follow.

Make sure your video looks good

It may seem obvious, but the better your sound and video quality, the more enjoyable your content will be to watch. That doesn’t mean you need to invest in pricey equipment, as mentioned above, but be conscious about filming in well-lit spaces where the audio is going to be clean… like at a holiday light display, for instance.

If clean audio is impossible, add a trending track to your video instead of the original sound. Here’s how to find business-friendly sounds to use on your TikTok.

How-to videos and tutorials are always popular

Whether it’s a fitness video or a cooking demo, audiences tend to like a little bit of education in their TikTok feed. Create videos that show off your expertise or reveal some behind-the-scenes intel to keep them watching.

Team up with other creators

Try out the Duets feature to engage with other videos or commission an influencer for a partnership.

Dive deeper into our guide to getting more TikTok views here and explore ideas for creative, engaging TikTok videos here.

Go live

Like going live on any social media channel, doing a livestream on TikTok is a chance to connect in real time with your audience. Followers can engage with you in the moment, asking questions or sharing feedback: it’s spontaneous and authentic, and downright exciting (not to mention a great way to drive social commerce.)

Anything could happen when you’re broadcasting live… for better or for worse. Try sharing a live tutorial, putting on a performance, or broadcasting a conversation or interview. Whatever you’re putting out into the world, it’s a hyper-engaging way to spotlight your brand’s voice and values.

Here’s our step-by-step guide to going live on TikTok.

Use hashtags

TikTok hashtags will help your content get discovered via search and help the TikTok algorithm identify what kind of topics you’re covering.

Learn more about the best TikTok hashtags to use to grow your reach and view counts.

Bonus: Get a free TikTok Growth Checklist from famous TikTok creator Tiffy Chen that shows you how to gain 1.6 million followers with only 3 studio lights and iMovie.

Step 5: Master the art of SEO

Hashtags, as mentioned above, are a vital part of getting your content discovered. But TikTok has leveled up its keyword and caption search ability in recent months (no wonder that Gen Z uses TikTok as a search engine more frequently than Google!).

Learn more about TikTok SEO strategy and general social media SEO strategy over on the blog.

Step 6: Post at the right time

To get your content in front of people, it doesn’t just have to be good: it has to go up at the right time.

Of course, the “right time” varies by audience and day of the week, and how the stars are aligned, but broadly speaking, you’ll see positive results if you post on Thursday at 7 p.m. (Check out our full explanation of the best time to post on TikTok for the full data breakdown.)

But what happens if you’re busy on Thursdays at 7 p.m.? That’s where a scheduling tool steps in to save the day.

Check out our detailed walk-through of how to schedule a TikTok post:

Step 7: Engage your audience and grow your following

First off: Don’t buy followers! We tried, and it’s a very bad idea! Stop it! Put that credit card down.

Ultimately, creating great content (see above!) is the #1 way to get those sweet, sweet views and follows. To keep those followers interested and engaged once they’re on board, the same rules of thumb apply as to any other social media platform:

Try out interactive live streams.

Experiment with polls and questions.

Comment and like content on other TikTok accounts.

Practice social listening to make sure you’re on top of trending topics in your TikTok community.

Step 6: Dig into analytics

Once you’ve been playing around with TikTok for a while, it’s important to look objectively at how things are going. How are your reach and engagement metrics doing? Are those tutorial videos actually hitting? Who is actually watching and following your content?

Analytics take the guesswork out of content strategy: they prove what’s working — and what’s not. TikTok’s in-platform analytics tool can show you some really interesting metrics to help inform your next steps.

Learn more about TikTok analytics.

TikTok’s commercial influence is huge. TikTok reports that 67% of users have been inspired to shop by the app, while 66% say that TikTok helped them decide what to buy. And if that’s not enough to convince you, there’s always the #tiktokmademebuyit hashtag.

On TikTok, you can promote your posts (spend some money to boost content you’ve made) or find creators to partner with via TikTok’s Branded Content portal.

Okay, there you have it: TikTok for Business 101! Get your account up and running and start exploring all the opportunities this wild and wonderful platform has to offer and explore the rest of our expert TikTok guides to deepen your knowledge even further.

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How To Use Tags On Youtube: A Step

Tags help the YouTube algorithm understand what your content is about and serve it to the right users. Find out how to use tags on YouTube for best results.

If you want to make sure your YouTube videos are being seen by the right people, you need to understand how YouTube tags work.

This article will walk you through what tags are on YouTube and why they’re important for both content creators and the platform’s algorithm.

We’ll also cover some best practices on using tags in addition to tips for creating accurate, meaningful tags that will help your video get found more easily by the right viewers — and get more views.

Bonus: Download the free 30-day plan to grow your YouTube following fast, a daily workbook of challenges that will help you kickstart your Youtube channel growth and track your success. Get real results after one month.

YouTube tags are keywords that you can add to your videos when uploading them to the platform. Tags work as descriptors that help the YouTube algorithm categorize content better.

The most important function of tags is helping YouTube’s algorithm understand what your video is about so it can serve it to the right users when they’re searching for something relevant.

The three main benefits of using relevant, accurate tags on YouTube are:

YouTube tags allow your video to be found by people using YouTube search to look for the type of content you’re offering.

YouTube tags help the platform’s algorithm understand what your video is about so it can surface it in suggestions and on users’ home pages.

YouTube tags help search engines find and index your videos more easily, which increases visibility in organic search results — even outside of YouTube (e.g. on Google).

Now that you know why tags are important, let’s learn how to add them to your videos.

Step 1: Log in to your YouTube account and go to your channel.

Step 2: In the left-hand menu, select Content.

Step 5: In the Tags section, type in your tags, separating them with commas. You can use up to 500 characters.

That’s it!

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your tags, you might want to take a peek at what’s working for successful content within your niche.

To identify popular keywords, go to YouTube search and type in a topic that’s related to your content. For example, if you’re creating a how-to video on training indoor cats, you might type “cat training” into the search bar.

Open a popular video and look at the suggestions on the right side of the screen. The content there is often based on related searches. These are some of the keywords that people who have watched similar content before might be interested in watching next — so take note!

You can also use free online tools to find out what tags, exactly, other creators are using. Try Chrome extension VidIQ or this tag extractor to get inspired.

Source: VidIQ

1. Don’t go overboard

For best results, only use a few tags that are both broad and specific to your content.

Don’t try to cluster too many keywords in one tag or it might not show up when people search for it on YouTube.

2. Use trending tags

Follow the instructions on looking up tags or use YouTube’s auto-suggest feature to identify trends. To use auto-suggest, simply start typing your keyword in the YouTube search bar and YouTube will populate a list of related searches to help you.

Note: When adding trending tags to your videos, make sure they relate to your content. Using excessive, misleading, or irrelevant tags is against YouTube’s policies on spam, deceptive practices, and scams and can result in getting your account suspended.

3. Be specific

Some keywords are more likely to rank highly on search results pages than others, so it’s important to use the right ones when creating your tags. For example, “road trip” is less broad and has higher chances of ranking well in search engine results than “vacation.”

4. Include synonyms

Synonyms can be used as alternate tags for some topics and subjects. Think about the words your audience is likely to use when describing the topic of your video, and use those synonyms to broaden the reach of your tags.

5. Use a tag generator

If you’re out of ideas, use a tag generator to identify related and potentially trending tags. Tools like TunePocket or Keyword Tool come up with tag recommendations based on your video title or the main keyword you want to target — for free.

Source: TunePocket

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When Should A Developer Step In?

When Should a Developer Step In?

“Okay, I’m starting the next match. Everyone hold hands, and stay together!” That’s what one of my Xbox LIVE friends used to say in Modern Warfare. (And yes, it’s corny, but that’s what it feels like. Like we’re kids on a school field trip, trying not to lose one of our classmates.) It carried over to the second title in that story arc, and I remember us making jokes about it in Call of Duty: World at War. Before we finally decided to put Black Ops to the side, and focus on other games that didn’t suffer from these issues, we were joking about it yet again. The party system in Call of Duty is broken, and it’s a poor excuse for how it should work. You don’t even need to compare it to competitive titles like Bungie Studios’ Halo series to realize it’s broken. It just doesn’t work.

Truth be told, while my friends and I were suffering from these issues, and I know there were a few scattering reports of the same problem happening to others on the Xbox 360, it pales in comparison to what’s happening to PlayStation 3 owners. And even if I hadn’t gone through the same problems, I would still be sitting here, feeling your pain. I would still be wondering what, exactly, a developer can do to assuage those who bought their game, and feel like they literally got robbed. Of course, there’s no denying that developers put a ridiculous amount of time in their games; as well as energy, skill, and creativity. (Even if some people don’t think a certain game is creative, it was to at least one person out there, so that’s enough.) And I’m not here to point out any problems with how developers make their games. The trouble –the problem– comes afterwards.

So what should a developer do? Some say they should reimburse players affected by the issues — and with the money that Black Ops is making, that probably wouldn’t be too hard to do. Others think that even just a free add-on would suffice. While still others believe that just giving the game up entirely, and writing off the developer and title is what’s best for everyone. Obviously, Treyarch doesn’t want you to do that. And neither does Activision. But when you’ve got a game like Black Ops, with one of the main selling points its online multiplayer function, and it doesn’t work? A developer shouldn’t be surprised that people are calling them out, threatening to do all sorts of things.

And let’s not forget about the fact that Black Ops’ first piece of downloadable content (DLC) is heading to the Xbox 360 first, and won’t even be available for PlayStation 3 owners until a month later, at least. Another stab at PS3 owners. And one that just drives home the point that their console of choice is being shunned, at least when it comes to this game, and there doesn’t seem to be much hope. Should Treyarch and Activision let PlayStation 3 owners download the map pack, called First Strike, for free, when it comes out? There would surely be an uproar from 360 owners, especially those who have suffered from online connectivity issues.

So, what, then? What does a developer do? Is there anything for them to do, except continuously say that they are working tirelessly to fix the problem with patches and hot fixes? And then, what happens when the patch actually makes things worse, like patch 1.04? Perhaps a developer’s tactic should be to try and fix the problem, keep trying to fix it, but if nothing they’re trying is working, they provide an extra goodie to gamers. A free map? Maybe credits to use in the game, so they can buy more weapons, perks, or anything else they want? How about offer some money into their digital wallets?

I can’t say for sure what I believe a developer should do. If a game gets to the point that Black Ops has, with no sign of it getting better (or the console getting any real support, before the competition’s system), I’m not sure there’s any way to really come back. If you’ve already gotten rid of the game, and you start hearing that everything has been fixed, are you really going to buy it again? I’m sure there will be some people out there, but the trade-in has already been finalized. Treyarch and Activision will lose out on those used games being sold back to gamers.

Let me know what you think a developer should do. If you think they should do anything at all. Even if you don’t have a PS3, or you aren’t suffering from the problem. Do you think the developers out there owe it to gamers who bought the game some kind of additional content, or even money, because the game isn’t up to par? Or do they just keep trying to fix it, and leave it at that?

Step By Step Guide To Create Search Box In Excel

Search Box in Excel

Search Box in Excel is a customized feature that lets you easily locate and highlight specific data in a worksheet. It’s like searching for a book in a library. If you know the book’s title, you can search for it in the catalog instead of searching through every book on the shelves.

Similarly, the Search Box lets you quickly locate specific words or numbers in a large dataset. It helps you find what you need without manually searching through everything.

Search Box in Excel Syntax

=SEARCH(search_text, within_text, [start_num])

where:

search_text (required argument):

This is the text or substring you want to search for within the larger text string.

within_text (required argument):

This is the text string to search for the search_text.

start_num (optional argument):

This is the starting position from which you want to begin the search. If omitted, Excel assumes it to be 1 (the beginning of the text string).

Please remember that the SEARCH function in Excel is case-insensitive, which means it will not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. If a case-sensitive search is necessary, use the FIND function, which has a similar syntax but is case-sensitive.

How to Create a Search Box in Excel?

Now, let’s use some examples to understand how to create your own Search Box in Excel.

Examples of Search Box in Excel

You can download this Search Box Excel Template here – Search Box Excel Template

Example #1

Consider that you have the data of a company that sells and purchases used vehicles. However, the enormous amount of data makes searching for a particular car model name difficult. To simplify this process, you want to create a search box in Excel that highlights all values related to “Scooter” instead of manually searching through every cell.

Solution:

1. Open an Excel worksheet and go to the cell where you wish to create the search box. Here, we have selected G1 as the search box cell. You can highlight the selected cell to distinguish it from other cells.

The formula used above is deciphered after the last step for this example.

This simplifies the process of looking for any value. For example, after highlighting the fields related to Scooter, we can further refine our search results by applying a filter based on the color of those highlighted fields.

Now let’s understand the meaning of the parameters used in the Search formula and how it worked for us in Excel.

Explanation of Formula

Let’s have a look at each parameter individually.

1. $G$1

=SEARCH($G$1, $A2&$B2&$C2&$D2)

2. $A2&

This is the text string within which we want to search for the value specified in G9. The “&” symbol will join or concatenate the values in cells A2, B2, C2, and D2 into one string.

This is how it can help simplify the search process.

We can even use filters to perform a search as we did above, but then we would need to apply multiple filters to look for multiple things. Moreover, the example that we saw here had limited data. There may be cases when the amount of data in a sheet is huge. A Search Box can help us in all such situations as it creates a search criterion for the entire sheet.

Example #2

To create a search box in Excel, use the FILTER function (here, we are not applying a filter), an easy and efficient way to filter data based on criteria. Here are the steps to create a search box in Excel using the FILTER function, along with the following illustration for better understanding:

Solution:

Here’s the role of each part of the formula:

B3:D12: This is the range of values that you want to filter.

C3:C12=G2: This is the criteria that you want to use for filtering. Adjust it based on your specific criteria. This example compares the values in the range C3:C12 with the value in cell G2 (the value entered in the search box).

“NO MATCH FOUND”: This value will get displayed in the result box if no entries meet the filtering criteria. You can customize it to your preference.

With the FILTER function, you can easily create a search box in Excel that dynamically filters data based on your criteria, making it a powerful tool for data analysis and manipulation.

Things to Remember

Make sure that you enter the formula correctly in the conditional formatting window.

Use the $ sign as shown in Example 1 to ensure no deviation.

The & sign is useful for adding more columns in the formula. Ensure not to put the & sign at the end of the formula.

Though both Search Box and Filters are useful for fetching outputs based on various conditions, we should not use them interchangeably as they solve unique purposes in different manners. This box can also be useful to enhance the function of a filter.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Q1. Where is the search bar on Excel? Q2. Why is my search box not working in Excel?

Answer: There could be many reasons why the Microsoft Excel search box or “Find” tool isn’t working. Some possible explanations and solutions are as follows:

No text or value to search: Check that you have entered the correct search text or value in the search box’s “Find what” Excel may be unable to find matches if the search text is blank or contains a typo.

Active cell outside the search range: Excel looks for text or values within the current worksheet or range. Make certain that the active cell is within the search range. Excel may be unable to find matches if the active cell is outside the search range.

Incorrect search options: Excel’s “Find” tool provides several search options, including match case, search direction, and search by rows or columns. Check that you’ve selected the appropriate options based on your search criteria. Excel may be unable to find matches if the search options are not properly configured.

Protected worksheet: If the worksheet or workbook is password-protected or has restricted permissions, the “Find” tool may not function as expected. In such cases, you may need to unprotect the worksheet or workbook before using the “Find”

Excel version or installation issues: Excel version or installation issues: In some cases, problems with Excel itself, such as software bugs or installation errors, can interfere with the “Find” tool’s functionality. In such situations, you may need to update or reinstall Excel or contact Microsoft or your IT department for assistance.

Suppose you’ve checked all the above options, and the search box still doesn’t work in Excel. In that case, it’s best to consult the Excel document or Help feature or contact Microsoft support or your IT department for further troubleshooting and resolution.

Q3. What are the functions of a search bar?

Answer: A search bar is a tool that allows users to find specific content within a dataset. It has filtering capabilities auto-suggestion feature and can function as a navigation tool. It may also provide error handling, a history, and personalized recommendations. Finally, search results are visible for users to browse and select from.