Powersearching QUEST Model

Pew Research Results Google is the primary way teenagers conduct research Google Teachers say students turn to Google as main research tool 94 percent of the time 99 percent of the teachers surveyed either “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the idea that “search engines have conditioned students to expect to be able to find information quickly and easily.” (Purcell, Lee, Heaps, Buchanan, Jacklin, Jacklin, Chen & Zickuhl, 2012)

Pew Research How much of the information that teachers find using search engines is accurate or trustworthy? – 5 percent of teacher answered “all or almost” – 55 percent said “most” – 40 percent said “some”

Pew Research results (cont.) 57 % of teachers “spend class time helping students improve search terms and queries. 35 % of teachers devote class time to helping students understand how search engines work and how search results are actually generated and ranked. 29 % of teachers give students assignments that don't allow students to use search engines.

How do teachers rate the search-skill level of their students? 62 percent were “excellent,” “very good,” or “good” at using appropriate and effective search terms and queries when researching 52 percent of students understood how search results are generated

Pew Research Conclusions Students need instruction on: using multiple sources to support their arguments assessing the quality and accuracy of online information taking time to find hard-to-find information recognizing bias.

Q - QUESTIONING What do I want to know? – Create questions that you want to answer – Highlight key words – Use key words in questions to create key word combinations for searching What is my plan? – What is the purpose for my research? – How will I show what I’ve learned?

U – UNDERSTANDING RESOURCES How will I find out? The QUERY:The QUERY: Use more than one search engine Use more than one combination of key words Add “quotes around phrases” Add + sign, AND, OR to search for two things together Use color to filter image results

Keyword choice Choose words you would like to see in your results. Question: “I heard there was some old city in San Francisco Bay. What was it called?” Query: [ what was the old city in san francisco bay called? ] [ old city san francisco bay ] [ ghost town san francisco bay ]

Word order matters who a who the who Capitalization does not matter red Delicious red dEliCiOus Characters that are ignored § ¶ ¥ £ € © ® ≅ ≠ √ #, ++, +, %, $ Some characters do matter when used with search terms and no spaces

Control F ● Knowing how to find a word on a page speeds up search ● Knowing how to find a word puts you in the top 10% ● You can figure out if the word exists on the web page

Boolean Operators + AND OR “tesla coil” OR “jacobs ladder” -penguins -pittsburghpenguins -pittsburgh site:gov Constitution site:govConstitution site:gov filetype:pdf filetype:kml lewis and clark expedition “coral bleaching” intext:geophysics

Popular Search Engines for Students

E - EVALUATING EZFynd Model how to critically evaluate a website – Look at the URL – Locate the author – Check the links Verify the authenticity of sites you visit Check who owns the site Save URL’s on DeliciousDelicious

What does this mean? Take notes on relevant information Two-column web journal S - SYNTHESIZING

T - TRANSFORMING CHoMP An elephant’s skin is wrinkled. The skin is almost one inch thick. It will burn if it is exposed to the sun for a long time. That is why elephants spend much of the day in the shade. elephant skin wrinkled inch thick burn sun long time spend day shade Even though an elephant’s skin is wrinkled and almost an inch thick it is very sensitive to the sun. In fact, it spends a significant amount of time in the shade to protect against burning.

Resources for Teachers Google Search Lesson Plans for Teachers ation/index.html ation/index.html 20 Best search engines for students: portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engi nes_for_Students.html portal.com/articles/20_of_the_Best_Search_Engi nes_for_Students.html Information about Sweetsearch

References Purcell, K., Lee, R., Heaps, A., Buchanan, J., Jacklin, F., Jacklin, A., Chen, C., & Zickuhl, K. (2012). How teens do research in the digital world. Retrieved from Research.aspx Research.aspx