Google announced a new online course for learning about how to become a Google power searcher. The course consists of six free 50-minute classes with interactive activities and opportunities to connect with others using Google Groups and Google+ (including Hangouts On Air).

Those who pass the post-course assessment will get a printable Certificate of Completion, which the company will email you.

“Our course is aimed at empowering you to find what you need faster, no matter how you currently use search,” says Google Education Program Manager Terry Ednacot. “For example, did you know that you can search for and read pages written in languages you’ve never even studied? Identify the location of a picture your friend took during his vacation a few months ago? How about finally identifying that green-covered book about gardening that you’ve been trying to track down for years?”

This, Ednacot says, you can learn in these six classes.

“Power Searching with Google blends the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) learning format pioneered by Stanford and MIT with our social and communication tools to create what we hope is a true community learning experience,” Ednacot adds.

Registration for the classes is open today, and ends July 16. Course-related activities will end on July 23, 2012.

If you’d rather learn how to build a search engine yourself, a Google engineer has a class for that too. Matt Cutts has some suggested reading, as well.

Google will be offering plenty more education to developers at Google I/O this week (starting on Wednesday).