Teaching Students to Effectively Use the Internet

We all know that when it comes to information, not all things are created equal. There are editorials, essays, advertisements, testimonials articles etc. It can be hard enough for students to distinguish between these in the print world. Factor in the web and even a seasoned information consumer might experience difficulties in identifying different types of information.

In many cases the source of the information can be a student's most important clue in identifying different types of information. Just as when they evaluate information for accuracy and reliability, students need to ask themselves:

A subject directory organizes Internet resources by subject or topics. The important thing about directories is that a real person makes a decision about what information goes where. They are great places to start your research and be very useful to students in narrowing a topic. Many directories can be searched by keyword and most offer special features like information guides, free email, or current news. Perhaps the most famous subject directory is Yahoo, launched in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang, two candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. They started their guide as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet and it quickly developed into the Internet phenomena we know today.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com

Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org

Using Subject Specific Resources on the Internet

Subject specific resources are basically those web sites that provide information on a particular topic or for a particular purpose. Using these types of resources means that students can quickly find the information they need without wasting time searching through unrelated sites. The trick of course is that you have to actually know about these subject specific resources. If you don't then you will have to use a subject directory or search engine to find them.

Hoover's Online http://www.hoovers.com Search for Company information. This is a subscription service but does provide lots of useful information for free.	Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org A library for the Internet community developed by the University of Michigan
AJR Newslink http://www.newslink.org The American Journalism Review web site provides links to over 9,000 newspapers, broadcasters, magazines and newspapers worldwide.	Librarian's Index to the Internet Sunsite.berkeley.edu./InternetIndex This subject listing of Internet resources is developed and maintained by librarians at the University of California, Berkeley
Internet Movie Database us.imdb.com The ultimate movie reference sources.	Argus Clearinghouse http://www.clearinghouse.net/ Internet research library with a large collection of topical guides and pathfinders.
Fed Stats http://www.fedstats.gov Collection of statistics from over 70 government agencies.	About.com http://www.about.com/ Collection of guides and pathfinders maintained by subject experts.
InfoPlease Almanac http://www.infoplease.com The on-line version of the Info Please Almanac, includes a dictionary and encyclopedia.	SSCC Library Web Site http://dept.seattlecolleges.com/sslib/ A large listing of these resources can be found under research tools.

What is a Search Engine and How Does It Work?

A search engine is essentially a database that points to Web sites and Internet resources. The search engine database is compiled by means of robot programs often called spiders, crawlers, or bots. These spiders, crawlers and bots are programmed to find web pages, follow all the links they contain and add any new information they find to the master database. It is important to remember that when you are using a search engine, you are not really searching the entire Internet, but a database of pages and resources from the Internet compiled by the bots.

Once the information has been collected by the robot programs it is turned over to the search engine's indexing program. An indexing program helps to establish access points to the information collected by the robot programs and indicates these access points in the database.

When you submit a query or question to the search engine, a retrieval engine searches the database compiled by the robot programs and indexing programs, identifies items that match your query and organizes and displays them in a particular order based on the relevancy or how closely they match your query.

All of this information is presented to your by means of the search engine's HTML interface, the actual web page you see when you enter your query.

There are several important things to remember about search engines.

Search engines are only as smart as the questions you ask
Search engines search full text and have trouble making distinctions around word meanings
Search engine results can be misleading
Even the best search engine will not search the entire Internet

So if all of these things are true about search engines, why bother using them? This good question brings us to our final point to remember.

Until something better comes along, search engines are the best tools we have for performing complex searches on the Internet.

Search Engines Results (or why the Internet is not really full of porn)

While viewing the results from a search engine you are likely to come across sites that seem in no way to match your query. In some cases, these hits may be to sites that contain questionable or pornographic material. Many people who repeatedly encounter these types of sites begin to make the incorrect assumption that the Internet is full of pornography. This is hardly the case and in fact the only reasons why these types of unrelated hits come up time after time on your searches, is because the people who build these sites know how search engines work and they have been able to make that knowledge work for them.

These sites misuse and abuse search engines for the sole purpose of increasing their sites rankings in the search engine results. The higher the rankings the higher the possibility that someone would click on that hit and visit the site.

Many of the names for these types of abuse are colorful and amusing, that is until you are made an unwilling victim.

Font matching	Adding keywords or the same word over and over again, but matching the font color to the background color so no one can tell. Example of Font Matching
Meta jacking	Stealing someone else's Meta tags (tags use to provide descriptions of a page) in order to inflate your own ranking.
Key Word Gateways	Directing people to a page then automatically taking them somewhere else.
Mouse Trapping	Using scripting language to prevent someone from leaving your site

The good news is that search engines are completely aware of these tricks and punish sites that may seek to manipulate rankings.

Help Student Develop a Search Strategy

The Internet is full of information. Some of this information is useless clutter and some of it is vital and important. The key to finding the information you need on the Internet is to develop a search strategy.

A search strategy can be thought of as a map to the information you are looking for. If you have an incomplete or inaccurate map, chances are you are not going to find what you want. If you have a detailed and accurate map, finding what you want is going to be an easy and efficient process. The

same holds true for search strategies, with a thorough and well thought out strategy, one will not only find the information they are looking for, but find it quickly and effectively.

Activities

Have students keep a research journal outlining their search strategy.
Have students create a help guide for a particular search tool.
A scavenger hunt is an excellent way to encourage students to search the Internet provided you provide students with adequate training on how to search the Internet and that you emphasis not just the answer, but also the process and source students used to find it.

Search Engine & Search Engine Resources

Search Engines

AltaVista	Lycos	Google
http://www.altavista.com	http://www.lycos.com	http://www.google.com
Infoseek	HotBot	Northern Light
http://www.infoseek.com	http://www.hotbot.com	http://www.northernlight.com/

Search Engine Resources

Search Engine Watch	Search.com
http://www.searchenginewatch.com	http://search.cnet.com/

Using a Search Engine

Is there a trick to using search engines? Most definitely! Although most search engines basically function the same way, there are many differences among them.

Some search engines contain a database of 11 million web pages others have less than 3 million.
Some search engines allow only full text searching (searching through the entire text of a document) and while others also offer field searching (searching only a specific field within a document, such as the title or author field).
Some search engines offer only basic search commands, yet still others allow you to develop complex searches.

Regardless of the search engine, the four part process below will help you to develop effective queries and retrieve better results.

Step one: Selecting Keywords

Keywords are essentially the terms you use to ask your question. Keywords are the most important part of your search and the first thing you should check if a search is not working.

Step Two: Building a Search Query

A search query or query is another name for the request or question you submit to a search engine. Once you have selected your keywords, it is time to tell the search engine exactly what type of information you are looking for.

Boolean

And
Information with both the words Dog and Cat
OR
Information with either the words Dog or Cat
Not
Information with only the words Dogs not Cat

Fuzzy Boolean

+ (+dog)
The + sign says that no matter what information is available the information you want must have the word Dog.

- (-dog)
The - sign says that no matter what information is available the information you want must not have the word Dog.

Phrases

"Phrase = Exact word order"
Sometimes when you have more than one keyword it is best to express it as a phrase. Enclosing the keywords in "quotations" is how you would define a phrase.

Step Three: Evaluating your search results

Once you have constructed and submitted your search query, it is time to evaluate your results. Most search engines generally list hits (items that match your search query) based on relevancy.

Relevancy is the percentage of how well a web page matches your search query. Some search engines will only give you the top fifty hits returned by your query, other will give you all the hits that matched. Sometime this number can be very large, even reaching into the millions. There are three things to look for when evaluating your search results.

If you don't find what you are looking for in the first two pages of results try using a different query. Most likely you need to choose different keywords.
Look through your results for other keywords that might help further narrow you search. For instance if your search on sewing careers brings up results with the word seamstress, than you might also want to use seamstress as a keyword.
Look for keywords you may want to exclude. If you are looking for information on Tigers, but your results include hits about Tiger Woods you may want to exclude the keyword woods.

Step Four: Rebuilding your Query

After performing the first three steps, if you have not found what you are looking for, you will want to go back to step one and rebuild your query.

Don't be discouraged, your first few searches may seem awkward and slow. But with a little practice, your searches will become faster and more precise.

The Internet can be a terrible temptation for dishonorable, misinformed or procrastinating student.