Instructions 

Complete the following search lesson; read all the instructions and information it and answer the questions in the text boxes below them.

The scavenger hunt questions will count as a bonus and it is not obligatory to hand them in. The other questions are mandatory.

Go to the pages indicated in the search lesson by clicking on the links. Look in them for the information you need. 

When you finish and are sure of your answers, send the form.

Introduction

Few people have difficulty finding "something" on the internet when they use a search engine. The problem is finding a particular piece of needed information AND information that the searcher can be fairly certain is accurate. In addition, you want to find the information in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes it is much more sensible to look in an encyclopedia or an almanac for an answer. You can waste hours searching on the internet unless you learn good search strategies.

The Task

Search engines are software programs that use spiders (or crawlers or robots) to gather information from web pages and return them back to the search engine. Each search engine searches in a different way and has different features to help you. It is your task to learn strategies to get the best results from one search engine, AltaVista.

You will visit several websites to enhance your knowledge of search strategies, to evaluate web pages and to learn more about search engines. 

As a concluding exercise you will construct searches to find answers to a number of scavenger hunt questions. This will be a bonus for your English grade in one achievement you choose it).

Search Engines vs. Directories

Search engines, directories, meta search engines and hybrids are all commonly called "search engines". You can conduct good searches using any of them.

Visit Search Engine Watch and MetaSearch Engines and answer the following questions. 

1. What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?
2. Give an example of a search engine.
3. Give an example of a directory.
4. Give an example of a metasearch engine.

(Answer questions 1-4 here)

Constructing a Search

The following devices will help you create an effective search.

Boolean Searching - You can refine a search using the words AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR.

AND is used if all the words must be in the document

OR is used if any of the words may be in the document

NOT is used to remove a word from the search

NEAR requires that two words be within 10 words of each other

Visit the Virtual Librarian at Monash University and read about Boolean searches.

Using your new knowledge of Boolean logic, what information will you get with each of the following searches?

5. smoking AND adolescents
6. smoking AND teenagers
7. smoking AND (adolescents OR teenagers)
8. smoking AND teenagers AND cancer

(Answer questions 5-8 here)

Phrases - Most search engines permit the use of quotation marks around phrases that you wish to search. The quotation marks require that the search engine search for the entire phrase as typed.

Go to AltaVista  and search for:
double, double toil and trouble
Now try "double, double toil and trouble" using quotation marks.

9. What play is this quote from and who wrote the play?

(Answer question 9 here)

Use of + and -
Altavista allows the placement of a + before each word that must be in the document and a - before each word that must not be in the document. If you want a recipe for chocolate turtles without peanuts you would type: +"chocolate turtles" -peanuts
Using boolean works just as well as using + , -

Wild Cards, Date, Choice of Language

10. Go to AltaVista Help and read about the topics above.
    What search terms might be retrieved if you type educat*?

(Answer question t10 here)

Evaluation of Web Sites

One of the biggest problems with information on the internet is the questionable authority of individual sites. Everyone and anyone is an author on the internet.

Ask yourself: Why is this information online? What is the purpose of this Web page? Is it to provide information, to persuade the viewer, or to brag or be exhibitionistic?

Go to Judging Quality on the Web at the Charles E. Young (www.science.widener.edu/~withers/inform.htm) and read about evaluating Web sites.

Visit Kathy Schrock's Critical Evaluation Survey: Middle School Level and read through the evaluation questions.

11. Visit one of the Web pages below and evaluate the site using the evaluation survey.

• www.diegorivera.com
• www.worldwar1.com
• www.nps.gov
• http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/pubs.html

(Complete the survey here)

Learning Advice

Give time and careful thought to the construction of your search terms.

 

Look at the URL for clues to the authority of the author: gov means government, edu means education, org means organization, com means commercial.

 

Scroll through the Web page before making any decisions as to usefullness or reliability.

 

Decide on the authority and accuracy of the Web page.

 

Decide which links to visit.

Conclusion

Congratulations! Upon completion of this assignment, you will have learned how to construct effective search strategies and how to evaluate the accuracy of information you retrieve from various Web sites. The time you spend searching for answers will be reduced and you will be able to rely on the information you find.