Posted: Sat, 02/20/2016 - 1:16 pm EST
Teach students to combine critical-thinking skills and smart-searching techniques so they can produce relevant Internet search results. - Exploring Computer Science Unit 1 - Human Computer Interaction, instructional days 5-7 - Page 37-39 Version 6 (Originally posted on CS Teaching Tips).
GOAL:
- Students proactively build up their Internet searching skills so their searches produce the best results possible.
- Instead of indiscriminately clicking on the first few links from the millions of results produced by a simple search, students will know how to make searches that produce fewer results with higher quality links.
REASON:
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Most students don’t know how to extract the most relevant information from a search that produces millions of results; they normally just type in a few keywords because they think that’s sufficient.
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Many people are passive web searchers, they often trust that the top three results in an Internet search are the best and most relevant sites
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People incorrectly assume the tops links represent the best possible resources.
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Action:
- Teach students how to actively control their internet search to produce the best results in the first place when using Google.
- Use Search Tools to limit queries to a particular time range.
- Search Tools in Google is located under the search box next to the “more” drop-down box (at the end of the menu of result categories types).
- Example: Users looking for the most recent advances in medicine or technology can filter by date to find the most current articles.
- Another filter users can try is site, which limits search outcomes by domain type. For only education domains, use site:edu
- This is a good filter when searching for recent advances in medicine because preliminary research first takes place and is published in academia.
- Another filter users can try is site, which limits search outcomes by domain type. For only education domains, use site:edu
- Build up a search using Google’s Advanced Search, located within the settings’ gear icon, which can be found under the top right corner of an active search page.
- You can use advanced search to narrow down the results by site, domain, region, language (English, Spanish, etc), file type, and usage rights.
- Example: Put the the country in the region section of the advanced search to find out how a country reported on an event.
- Region allows users to look for resources from a specific location or country.
- In a regular search bar you can search by region by typing in the countrycode after site: (e.g., site:fr for resources coming from France)
- Teach students how to rate a website using a checklist
- Use Search Tools to limit queries to a particular time range.
Tutorials and videos on how to use Google Advanced Search:
- Instructions to become a Google Power User.
- Google Advanced Search - a video for journalists that has examples of site:, related:, filetype:, and using the minus(-) to refine searches.
- Three Advanced Search Tools for students - this video looks at Reading Level (this filter was dropped in May, 2015), site and filetype.
- Google Advanced Search 2014 - looks at the Search Tools, and filetypes in advanced search.
Originally posted on CS Teaching Tips