The
following article is an edited excerpt from
Raw Materials for the Mind:
Teaching & Learning in Information &
Technology Rich Schools
ISBN: 0-9667432-0-2
by David Warlick
http://landmark-project.com/rmfm/
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Searching
the Internet: Part III
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March 18, 1999
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A
Note
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Today,
when I present this and other techniques for
searching the Internet in workshops, I am teaching
teachers. My goal is to help educators become
more effective Net researchs. At this time,
the Internet is a more powerful tool for teachers
than it is for students. The Internet can
have more and better impact on classrooms when it
is in the hands of skilled and creative teachers
than plugging every student in your school to the
global network.
For the
same reasons that I attacked magazines with
scissors when I when I taught history, the Internet
is a warehouse of materials that skilled teachers
can find, harvest, and bring into the classroom as
information, handouts, overhead transparencies, on
disk, or on the schools network. If teachers
become skilled and confident with advanced and
appropriate uses of the Internet, then they will
help their students develop these same
skills.
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The Search Process
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Conducting effective searches of the Internet is
rarely a matter of typing in a single keyword and
being presented with the solution to your problem,
at the top of a list of 54,000 hits. It is much
more frequently a series of searches, each
revealing more clues about the information that is
available and where that information can be found.
Developing a search process is unique to each
person because we each have different styles of
using information and specific information needs.
However, the following model can be used as a
springboard to your own style. S.E.A.R.C.H.
was specifically developed as a teaching aid, a
model to help us teach teachers and students how to
conduct deep research of the Internet. The
technique is an acronym that describes the process.
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S
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Start with a key term on Yahoo or
another small index search tool.
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E
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Edit the search expression with terms
gleaned from the initial search.
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A
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Advance into a larger index search
tool.
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R
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Refine the search phrase
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C
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Cycle back and advance again.
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H
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Harvest the results.
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Start with a key term on
Yahoo or another small index search tool
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There are two important reasons why we start our
search with a small index search tool. Because
Yahoo, for instance, is searching through a small
index or database, you will receive a limited
number of hits. Searching Yahoo for information on
the Goldrush returned 101 web pages.
Conducting the same search on Alta Vista
(http://www.altavista.com), a large index search
tool, returned 10,553 web pages. Considering that
the task at this point is not to find the answer,
but to learn more about what it available, 101 is a
much more manageable listing to review than over
ten-thousand.
The second reason to start with a small index
tool is that while you are getting a limited number
of hits from your search, you are receiving a good
cross-section of the types of web resources that
are available on your topic. You get very good
examples of the resources that are relevant to your
topic. You are also getting a good representation
of the resources that are not relevant. At
this point in the search process, learning about
the irrelevant hits is just as important as
learning about the relevant hits, because filtering
out bad pages is just as important as attracting
good pages.
Review as many of the returns as you can. Look
for words that are common among the good hits and
also words that are common among the bad
hits. Write these words down. These
are clues (remember, you are being a detective) for
your continuing investigation.
Tip:
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It is a good idea to
have a text processor open while you are
conducting your searches. You can
type the keywords into the text processor
as you identify them, and then use the
program to edit your list of key words
into a boolean search expression.
Some good text processors to use include:
NotPad for Windows 3.x, WordPad for
Windows 95/98, and SimpleText for Mac
OS.
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Edit the search expression
with terms gleaned from the initial
search
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As with any assistant, the degree to which your
search tool helps you solve your problem depends on
how well you communicate with it. When you use the
word Goldrush in a keyword search, you are
saying, "Show me every page that has the word
Goldrush mentioned in it." This is a simple
question that simply returns nearly ten thousand
hits when asked of Alta Vista. We must
communicate with our search tools as clearly as we
can.
First of all, we now have a variety of keywords
for the search engine to consider. In our review of
the Yahoo hits, we have found that relevant web
pages commonly include the words diary,
photos, and California. We found
that pages with Internet, kennel,
shopping, game, and
prospecting were not relevant to our
instructional needs. So we could include all of
these words in our search expression. But we need
connectors to better describe the relationships
between these keywords and between the words and
the topic that we are exploring. The resulting
edited phrase may look like this:
(Goldrush AND (diary OR
photos OR California)) NOT (Internet OR kennel OR
shopping OR game OR prospecting)
See Search
II article for information about
Boolean searching.
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Advance into a larger
index search tool
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Go to a large index search engine, enter your
edited search phrase, and search. Here are a few
search engines that understand Boolean.
Excite
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http://www.excite.com
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Alta
Vista
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http://www.altavista.com
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HotBot
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http://www.hotbot.com
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As you review the hits, look for resources that
will help you accomplish your task. Also continue
to look for new keywords that are commonly found in
especially useful web pages. Also look for
words that show up in pages that do not help you.
Also keep an eye out for evidence that your
edited search phrase was not properly
constructed. For instance, each adjustment to
your search expression should result in more
relevant hits and fewer irrelevant hits. If
the opposite occurs then revisit your search
phrase.
One of the advantages of a process approach to
searching the Internet is the fact that the student
or teacher will learn about the topic while
examining web pages that turn up. This is
especially important for teachers since in this day
and time of rapidly changing and growing
information, even in history, it is essential that
educators continue to learn and grow their
reservoir of information.
Another advantage of this process approach to
searching that is perhaps even more important to
teachers is the fact that they will find types of
resources that they had not anticipated. For
instance, in beginning this search about the
Goldrush, our teacher may have expected to find
some photographs, some old newspaper stories, and
some web pages about the history of the
event. However, in the search, they found a
number of web pages with diaries kept by men and
women who were involved in the event. Finding
these unexpected resources often leads to new
techniques for helping students learn.
How might you use the diary of an 1849 gold
prospector to help your students learn about that
exciting time in our history?
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Refine the search
expression
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Exploring the web pages that your initial
large-index search returned will reveal more
keywords to consider adding to your search
expression. You may also uncover more clues as to
how you might adjust the structure of your search
expression. For instance, you might have found that
filtering out the word prospecting resulted
in losing a number of relevant websites.
Refine your search expression based on the
evidence that you find in your continuing
examination of web pages. Make it more
efficient by adding new words, new relationships --
experiment. Remember, the Internet is
practically free. You don't have to get it
right the first time.
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Cycle back and Advance
again
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Return to the same or to another advanced search
engine and enter your refined search expression.
Again, examine the hits, looking for more clues
about your topic and the resources available on the
Internet that will help you accomplish your
goals. When you have refined your express
based on the 2nd sweep of the search tool, cycle
back again, and again, until you have answered your
question, solved your problem, or collected all of
the material you will need for your new unit on the
westward movement.
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Harvest the
results
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Collect your information gems and import them
into your information processing software or other
information processing tool.
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