S.E.A.R.C.H.

S.E.A.R.C.H. the Internet NCaect Conference
February 13, 1998

Greetings,

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed working with you today. I hope that your conference was an enjoyable and inspiring experience and that you left my session(s) with new knowledge and insights about using the Internet.

-- dave --

URLs

The Landmark Project (Landmarks for Schools)	http://www.landmark-project.com
ThinkQuest & current projects	http://www.advanced.org/thinkquest/
E.R.I.C.	http://ericir.syr.edu
Search Tools	Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com Yahooligans http://www.yahooligans.com Lycos http://www.lycos.com Excite http://www.excite.com Alta Vista http://www.altavista.digital.com InfoSeek http://www.infoseek.com
S.E.A.R.C.H. Process Pages	http://www.landmark-project.com/search/ http://www.cgsh.org/search/
If there are any other URLs that we looked at that I have not included here, please let me know.

Searching the Internet

Remember that searching the Internet is a process and not a one step thing. The following is only a model for beginning the development of your search skills. Also, remember the search tool that I have on the Internet at:

http://www.landmark-project.com/search/

S	tart with a small database search tool -- Yahoo
	Conduct this search to get a grasp on the types of resources that a available on the Internet. Yahoo will give you a very good representation. This gives you a chance to identify both the good and bad hits you will be getting and a chance to identify the keywords that are common to both the good and bad hits, both equally valuable.
E	dit search phrase as a result
	Create a boolean search expression from the common words discovered in your Yahoo search. Ex: (Earthquake OR seismology) NOT (engineer OR prediction OR individual)
A	dvance into a large database search engine -- Altavista or Excit
	Use your edited search expression on a large database such as Alta Vista or Excite.
R	efine search phrase
	Again, examine the good and bad hits, identify more key words and incorporte them in your search expression...refine your search phrase.
C	ycle back and Advance again
	Pretty clear!
H	arvest resources
	Good Luck!

Evaluating Web Sites

Remember that we talked about evaluating web sites based on the goals that you are your students have established for their information products. There are a number of files that are available to you for evaluating web resources in just this way.