Teaching Students to Safely and Smartly Search the Internet

Many of our students do not take the time to evaluate websites for validity. This presentation will provide background on how students search and activities you can use with your students.

When it comes to using the Internet effectively, students must be prepared to do the following: Conduct research Evaluate information (think critically about the information they find) Use that information to make a decision Students tend to encounter difficulty around the following

Evaluating Information on the Internet: Not Everything on the Web is True!

Do you believe that everything you read is true? What about everything on the Internet? In a world where anyone can publish on the web, not all information is created equal. Much of the information you find on the Internet is reliable, accurate and true but much of it is also biased, misleading and downright false. In the real world, parents, friends, education and experiences help us develop the ability to determine fact from fiction truth from lie. In situations where the line between truth and lies are blurred, we have developed an internal toolbox of tips and techniques to make educated guess about what to believe.

When it comes to information on the web ask yourself the following questions
Who is the Author? Can you find the name of the author or creator? Are there any credentials? Degree, title, etc Is there contact information somewhere on the page? Is there a link to a homepage? is it for an individual or for an organization?

What can you tell from the URL? Can you tell anything about the source of the information from the domain name or URL? Can you find out more about the URL? .org? (organization .com? (commercial) .gov? (government) .edu? (educational) .net (network)

What is the purpose of the web site? Does the site have one if so what? Is the site trying to inform, persuade, or sell? Is it geared to a particular audience?

Is the site objective? Is the site fact or opinion? Is the author's point-of-view objective and impartial? Is there affiliation with an organization? If so is there some bias? Prodeathpenalty.com Amnesty.org

Is this information accurate? Can this information be verified? You may need to do a little searching to verify information. Is there quality control? Are there spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or typos?

Is the information reliable and credible? Would you bet your life on this information? What institution (company, government, university, etc.) supports this information? Can you verify this site with a non-web equivalent? Who does the site link to? And who links to the site?

Is the information current? Is the information current in nature? Can you find evidence of recent updates?

Activities An excellent way to help students evaluate information on the web, is to give them several sites to look at and ask them to apply the criteria above. Can you tell which of these web sites are real and which are not what they seem?

http://www.improb.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html http://www.d-b.net/dti/ http://ajobonline.com/ http://www.dhmo.org http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/ "type martin luther king .org as URL with no spaces" http://www.whitehouse.net/ http://www.whitehouse.gov http://62.116.31.68/index00.htm http://sunny.crk.umn.edu/courses/MISC/MCG/

Demonstrate the importance of evaluating information by showing bogus sites and discussing potential dangers. Have student brainstorm their own criteria for evaluating web sites

Inability to distinguish different types of information We all know that when it comes to information, not all things are created equal. There are editorials, essays, advertisements, testimonials articles etc. It can be hard enough for students to distinguish between these in the print world. Factor in the web and even a seasoned information consumer might experience difficulties in identifying different types of information. In many cases the source of the information can be a student's most important clue in identifying different types of information. Just as when they evaluate information for accuracy and reliability, students need to ask themselves: Who is responsible for this information? Does the URL or contents give me any clues to the information origins? Can I tell anything about the information based on the author and the information's origins?

Activities Have students identify different types of information on the same topic. Letting them select the topic can make this a very interesting exercise for the students.

Searching the Internet You Know the Source of the Information Use a Search Engine Unfortunately many students aren't even aware of these methods and instead resort to another method, dot comming. Basically dot comming entails identifying a one-word description of what you need and adding .com to the end of it. It seems incredibly silly, but unfortunately it quite often works...sometimes with disastrous results.

1.

Need information on a 22nd Vice President? http://vicepresidents.com/

2.

Writing a report on Traditional Treatments for Breast Cancer? http://www.breastcancer.com/

3.

Searching for the history of the White House? http://www.whitehouse.com

Of the three dot com sites above, only the first one would provide suitable information to answer the question. The second one would lead a student to a web site on alternative therapies for breast cancer and although it is an excellent site, it may not give students the information they need to do a report on traditional treatments for breast cancer. Finally, the third site is a notorious pornography site with absolutely no information on the White House or its history. Unfortunately, the one out of three success rate above, would be enough to convince many students that this is an effective way to search the web

What is a Search Engine and How Does It Work?

A search engine is essentially a database that points to Web sites and Internet resources. The search engine database is compiled by means of robot programs often called spiders, crawlers, or bots. These spiders, crawlers and bots are programmed to find web pages, follow all the links they contain and add any new information they find to the master database. It is important to remember that when you are using a search engine, you are not really searching the entire Internet, but a database of pages and resources from the Internet compiled by the bots.

Once the information has been collected by the robot programs it is turned over to the search engine's indexing program. An indexing program helps to establish access points to the information collected by the robot programs and indicates these access points in the database. When you submit a query or question to the search engine, a retrieval engine searches the database compiled by the robot programs and indexing programs, identifies items that match your query and organizes and displays them in a particular order based on the relevancy or how closely they match your query.

All of this information is presented to your by means of the search engine's HTML interface, the actual web page you see when you enter your query. There are several important things to remember about search engines. Search engines are only as smart as the questions you ask Search engines search full text and have trouble making distinctions around word meanings Search engine results can be misleading Even the best search engine will not search the entire Internet So if all of these things are true about search engines, why bother using them? This good question brings us to our final point to remember. Until something better comes along, search engines are the best tools we have for performing complex searches on the Internet.

Help Student Develop a Search Strategy The Internet is full of information. Some of this information is useless clutter and some of it is vital and important. The key to finding the information you need on the Internet is to develop a search strategy. A search strategy can be thought of as a map to the information you are looking for. If you have an incomplete or inaccurate map, chances are you are not going to find what you want. If you have a detailed and accurate map, finding what you want is going to be an easy and efficient process. The same holds true for search strategies, with a thorough and well thought out strategy, one will not only find the information they are looking for, but find it quickly and effectively.

Activities Have students keep a research journal outlining their search strategy. Have students create a help guide for a particular search tool. A scavenger hunt is an excellent way to encourage students to search the Internet provided you provide students with adequate training on how to search the Internet and that you emphasis not just the answer, but also the process and source students used to find it.

The following information can be found on the following website: http://dept.sccd.ctc.edu/tlc/resources/teach.html