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Staff Development Activities
Web Searching Activity
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The purpose of today's staff development session is to introduce you to some methods that will be helpful to you when searching the Internet. When you scour the Web for nuggets of information, remember to use some special techniques to help refine your searches. The following anagram (SEARCH) from author David Warlick, will help us.

S- Start with a small index search tool, such as yahoo.com
E- Edit your search phrase with + and -
A- Advance to a larger search engine
R- Refine your search phrase using + and -
C- Cycle back to the search engine and enter the refined search
H- Harvest your selected resources
Step One:
What would you like to do in your classroom?

What would you like to find on the Web to help you?


Step Two:
S- Start with a small index search tool
To start, you should go to yahoo.com to plug in your search. Yahoo is less comprehensive than Google and will return fewer matches.
Enter what you will type in the search box here:
Now type those words in the search box on the Yahoo search page.
How many matches were there? Whoa! That’s a lot!
Now I want you to look carefully at the descriptions of the links on the first page. Many may appear helpful; many may not.
Glean the descriptions of each site on the first search results page and pick three helpful-looking sites to visit. These three pages should look like they MIGHT have some of the info you want to find.
From their descriptions, pick three terms (one or more words each) that pertain to what you are trying to research.
We’ll call each one a BEST. Enter these terms (BESTS) in the spaces provided

Now scan the search results page again but this time read the descriptions to find three pages that look unhelpful. Visit those pages to be sure they are as unhelpful as they appear.
From their descriptions, pick three terms (one or more words each) that pertain ONLY to things you are NOT trying to research. We’ll call each one a WORSTS. Enter these terms (WORSTS) in the spaces provided


Step Three
E- Edit your search phrase using + and -
Use + and - signs to tell your search engine what you want to search for and what you want to exclude from your search. It is important to note that you will never use a space between the + or - and the terms in your search engine.

For example:
Let’s say I want to teach a lesson on volcanoes. After following the same steps that you just completed, I know that I’m interested in pages that with the following words in each description (these are my BESTS):

  • Eruptions
  • Locations
  • Dangers

For the purposes of my lesson, I donžt care about (these are my WORSTS):

  • Culture
  • Safety
  • Myth

I would probably only pick two BESTS and two WORSTS to include in my search but it’s up to you. Each WORST should have a - directly before it. Do not put a space between the - and the word. Here’s an example of how my new search phrase would look:
+volcanoes +eruptions +dangers -culture -myth

Special Tricks:

  • OR: In addition to using the + and -, you can use the word OR more than one word for a specific term will work, e.g. food OR cuisine
  • –”Quotations can be used to search for an exact phrase, e.g. –digital divide” –school safety ”
  • An asterisk (*) can be used to indicate an expanded form of the word,
    • e.g. comput* can mean computer, computing, computation, etc.
    • HOWEVER, this will ONLY work in Yahoo's search engine

Now you try. Rephrase your search using – in front of two or three of your WORSTS and enter it in the space below


Step Four
A- Advance to a larger search engine
Try your newly refined request into a larger search engine. Herežs a list of some you may want to try.
Google.com
Queryster
Altavista.com Lycos.com

All are slightly different in their own way. You may prefer to use the same one or try a few different ones and figure out which style you prefer.

You can also use a search engine that searches through several web resources such as Ask.com, About.com, LookSmart.com, etc.

These metasearch engines are also helpful.
Metacrawler.com
Dogpile.com
 

Step Five
R- Refine your search phrase using minuses (-)
Return to the question in Step 1, "What would you like to find on the Web to help you?" Keep this in mind as you do Step Five, a similar procedure to the one in Step Two:
Glean the descriptions of each link on the first search results page. VISIT about three pages that look like they may have some of the info you want to find.
From the information you found on the few pages you visit, think of 2 or 3 more BESTS.
Write out ALL of the BESTS you’ve come up with in the spaces provided:

Now go back and scan the search results page again but this time VISIT about three pages that look like they don’t have the information you’re looking for.
From the information you found on the few pages you visit, think of 2 or 3 words that pertain ONLY to things you are NOT trying to research (WORSTS).
Write out ALL of the WORSTS you’ve come up with in the spaces provided:

Discard some of the BESTS and WORSTS you just listed until you have 4 BESTS and 2 or 3 WORSTS.
Using the BESTS and WORSTS left over, enter your new search phrase in the space below:


Step Six
C- Cycle back to the search engine and enter the refined search.
Type search phrase you just entered into Google’s search box.
How many matches were there this time?

H- Harvest your selected resources
Now you can finish the search! Did you find what you were looking for? What did you find out?


Step Seven
Discussion