Mrs. Geist Belfield Elementary School Librarian Helping Students Search Effectively

Some things to remember: “Surfing” is not searching. An hour on the Web may not answer a question that you could find within two minutes of picking up a reference book. Not all the information that exists in the world is on the Internet—Not all the information that is on the Internet is accurate.

 The Internet is a computer network covering the whole world. We can use it to search through three billion pages of the WORLD WIDE WEB, or to keep in touch with people by . WORLD WIDE WEB  Every computer linked to the Internet has an address. This is its IP number. When you send an or search for information on the Internet, your computer sends packets of data with the sender’s and receiver’s addresses attached. Special computers called servers and routers direct the data through the Internet.

 No one.  The Internet is not under the control of any person or country.  No one is in charge of organizing the Internet. It is held together by a set of standards, or rules, that set out how computers connected to it should exchange information.

 No one really knows.  Some websites, like Netcraft, try to count websites. They estimate there are about 525 MILLION websites (Nov. 2011)  There may be over 3 BILLION individual web pages. How big is a billion? (Click here)(Click here)  Millions of pages are added and deleted every day.

 ANYBODY CAN!  Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection—individuals, businesses, schools, governments, even entire countries can have one or many websites.  Studies have shown that most students believe MOST of what they see on the Internet.

 No.  It’s been said that searching the Internet is like dragging a fishing net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed.  This is called the “deep Web” or “invisible Web”. More later.

 Companies pay to put ads on websites.  Pop-ups and banners are trying to influence what you buy.  The information on commercial sites--.com— may be presented in such a way as to encourage you to buy a particular product.

 URL’s  Search engines  Searching techniques

 Stands for Uniform Resource Locator  This is the web “address” that connects you with a website, such as  Goes in the address bar at the top of the browser screen  Gives you information about the website

 transfer protocol: The language computers use to “talk” to one another  www—world wide web: the body of information connected by the cables and computers of the Internet .starwars—domain name: the structured, alphabetic-based, unique name for a computer on a network .com—top level domain: gives an idea of where the document is stored

.edu—higher education (colleges) .k-12—elementary to high schools .com—commercial .gov—government agency .mil—military .org—organization .net—computer network  Looking at the DOMAIN of a website can give you clues about how reliable the site’s information is.

 Libraries are an easy place to find information – they are planned, organized, and cataloged.  No one is in charge of organizing the Internet.  Well-prepared, focused searches will eliminate useless hits and wasted time.

 Are like the index in the back of a book  Let you search for specific words and topics  Use robots known as spiders to search through millions of web pages for information.  Can return much more information than you really need. A simple Google search for “volcanoes” returns over 20 Million hits!

    All of these search engines are designs with kids/students in mind.

 If you stacked up a billion sheets of notebook paper, the stack would be 63 miles high!  That’s as far as driving from Emporia to Richmond! Back to slides…