Class 12 Notes (notes are in progress and are subject to change)

Introduction:

Objectives (Skills 3&6):

• Use popular search engines to find accurate information
• Evaluate and compare differences, similarities and specialties of search engines/directories using Excel
• Google Scholar
• Directories
• Evaluating Web Sites for content, purpose, layout and agenda

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Discourse
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NOTE: update personal grade spreadsheets

NOTE: Useful technique to locate a term in a long document - keyboard command, CTRL-F (CMD-F on a Macintosh).

Chris Nolan - Searching the Internet

Topics from Mr. Nolan's Presentation

Finding Better Information on the Web (link for IE)

Alternate Link (works better with Firefox and Safari)

Searching the Internet using a Search Engine

• Information sought about hurricanes and global warming (how to)
• The use of advanced search in Google
• Use of +, -, and quotes ("   ")
• Google Scholar

Invisible Web

• What does it mean?
• What percentage of information on the Web is in the Invisible Web?

Directories (Subject Lists) for Academic Searches

• Librarians' Index to the Internet
• Infomine
• Trinity Library lists

What the url can tell you:

• Top level domain - .edu, .com, .org, .gov, etc.
• Optional country code at end of url: ..usa (most url's in the U.S. don't use this), .mx (Mexico), .nl (Netherlands), .ca (Canada), etc.
• Truncate

Structure of url:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
 

Practice truncating urls:

• Digital Photography - http://cel.colgate.edu/howto/digital-photo.htm

• Truncate class URL - http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jbelisle/cs1300/Topics/Syllabus/Syllabus.html

Homework:

Part 1:

Make a blog entry about what you learned from Chris Nolan's presentation - describe something new that you found out and something that surprised you.

Part 2: Create an Excel spreadsheet that compares search engines and directories. Follow the directions in the directions document and on the spreadsheet called WebSearch in the 12search folder.
Pay attention to the date of the information - http://www.webreference.com/authoring/seo_facts/
The example below shows only a partial portion of the assignment.

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