1. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Managing Vast Sources of Information  We are inundated with information  News sites are a good source for up-to-date and changing information  The way in which new is organized, reveals what their focus or philosophies or policies are. As an educator, it is important that you be able to discern the angle of the “info” they are disseminating  As an exercise, here are examples to look through. Notice the way in which they organize the importance of what is “news.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/ http://www.cnn.com/ http://www.foxnews.com/ http://www.npr.org/ http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

2. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-2 Searching the Web for Information  Individual web sites are carefully organized by their designers (hierarchically, for example)  But… no one organizes the entire Web, and it has grown unimaginably HUGE… too huge to just browse looking for specific items  Search engines solve the problem  Popular Search Engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask  What about Wikipedia? Is it a search engine?  While not a primary source, Wikipedia is a useful starting point for you, as an educator  http://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html http://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html  http://www.pcworld.com/article/251796/has_wikipedia_beat_britannica_in_the _encyclopedia_battle_.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/251796/has_wikipedia_beat_britannica_in_the _encyclopedia_battle_.html  http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-14-nature-wiki_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-12-14-nature-wiki_x.htm

3. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-3 Search Engine Basics  A search engine has two basic parts  Crawler: constantly runs, visits sites on the Internet, discovering Web pages and building/updating an index to the content it finds  Query processor: looks up user-submitted keywords in the index and reports back a list of Web pages the crawler has found containing those words

4. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-4 Crawlers  Build index indicating which Web pages (URLs) contain which words, based on their HTML text.  When a crawler visits a web page it: 1. adds all tokens (words) on the page into the index (words from the title, the body content, anchor text, META tags) 2. associates the URL for the page with each of these words 3. then visits all pages that are linked to the page being examined, and does steps 1 through 3 on each  Crawlers can miss pages  if no page points to it  if a page is dynamically created on-the-fly page that have only images, or unknown type (not HTML, PDF, etc.)

5. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-5 Query Processors  User submits one or more keywords (the query)  Index is consulted for these keywords, producing a list of web page URLs found by the crawler  Important to give a good query to get a useful list of pages in reply  Query not specific  Huge list of unwanted URLs

6. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder How to Search Effectively (on Google)  https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/134479?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/134479?hl=en

7. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-7 Ordering the Hits  How did Google decide on the order for the millions of related URLs, and put the “best” ones up top?  Order is determined by relevance in several ways. E.g. for the query red giant  Top URLs have “red giant” together on the page, in the order given in the query  Later down the list are pages with “giant red”, or words separated, or words in anchor text  Google enhances this with a relevance score called PageRank for each page

8. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Google Search  Google is the leading search and online advertising company  founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (1997/1998) – PhD. students at Stanford google – cricket term googol (10 100 ) – after which Google is named  Google’s success in search is largely based on its PageRank algorithm and its unique infrastructure of servers  Google offers specialty search engines for images, news, videos, blogs and more … iGoogle, Google + Google offers specialty search engines for images, news, videos, blogs and more … iGoogle, Google +  Google web services  build Google Maps and other Google services into your applications What is the impact of this?  AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) contextual advertising program  AdSense is Google’s advertising program for content publishers. Source of monetization for Web 2.0 companies adapted from “Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program”, Deitel & Deitel

9. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Other Search Engines  Yahoo!  Yahoo! started in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo (also Stanford Ph.D. students) as a web directory rather than a search engine (initially Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web – a list of their favorite websites manually added to categories)  Yahoo! expanded into other areas, becoming a popular provider of e-mail, user groups and more  Yahoo! acquired Overture (now Yahoo! Search Marketing) in 2003  MSN  MSN search was created in 1998, a year after Google was launched  MSN’s Live Search includes a new search engine (Bing), index and  Advertising market through Microsoft adCenter  Ask  Ask (formally known as AskJeeves.com) Why askJeeves

10. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Types of Search Engines  Vertical Search  Vertical search engines are specialists (focusing on specific topics) in comparison to generalists (e.g., Google and Yahoo and Bing)  Goal of providing user with a smaller number of more relevant results  Popular vertical search engines include travel sites (such as Kayak or Expedia), real-estate sites (such as Zillow or Trulia), job search sites (such as Indeed or Monster) and shopping search engines (such as Shopzilla and MySimon), ‘couponing; (Groupon)  Location-Based Search  Location-based search uses geographic information about the searcher to provide more relevant search results adapted from “Internet & World Wide Web: How to Program”, Deitel & Deitel

11. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder The Secret of my Search  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  Process of designing and tuning your website to maximize your findability and improve your rankings in organic (non-paid) search engine results White-hat SEO Black-hat SEO e.g. GooglebombGooglebomb –Could get you banned by search engines  Link Building  Process of increasing search engine rankings and traffic by generating inbound links to a particular website Search engine result pages (SERPs  Reciprocal linking  Link baiting  Natural linking

12. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-12 Web Information: Truth or Fiction?  Anyone can publish anything on the web  Note prevalence of blogs and wikis Good and bad … misuse of a useful tool  Some of what gets published is false, misleading, deceptive, self- serving, slanderous, or plain horrible  If it is on the web it must be true – NOT!  How do we know if the pages we find in our search are reliable?

13. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-13 Do Not Assume Too Much  Registered domain names may be misleading or deliberate hoaxes  www.whitehouse.gov vs. www.whitehouse.org vs. www.whitehouse.com www.whitehouse.govwww.whitehouse.org www.whitehouse.com  Look for who or what organization publishes the Web page  Respected organizations publish the best information  Check for the site's publisher http://www.whois.net/ This is not foolproof

14. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-14 Characteristics of Legitimate Sites  Web sites are most believable if they have these features:  Physical Existence - site provides a street address, phone number, e-mail address, executives, staff  Expertise - site includes references, citations or credentials, related links  Clarity - site is well organized, easy to use, and has site- searching facilities, sitemap  Currency - site was recently updated  Professionalism - site's grammar, spelling, and punctuation are correct; all links work

15. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-15 Check and Double Check  Remember that a site can have many of the features of legitimacy and still not be authoritative.  Examples: (dangers of Dihydrogen monoxide) (dangers of Dihydrogen monoxide)  Gatt.org Gatt.org http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres99_e/pr151_e.htm  Use known authoritative sites to cross check, or consult well-known debunkers (like snopes.com and Museum of Hoaxes)snopes.comMuseum of Hoaxes  When in doubt, check it out.  How about urban legends and parodies?  Test your assessment skills… check out the Burmese Mountain Dog web pageBurmese Mountain Dog

16. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder 5-16 http://www.burmesemountaindog.org/

17. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Search Effectively (some of my sample answers in brackets)  Search for at least 5 online sources of information that are related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic - whatever you have decided on. Copy and paste the 5 URLs. (http://career.ucsf.edu/grad-students-postdocs/teaching/teaching-resources http://www.merlot.org http://www.electricteacher.com/newteacher www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/ www.4teachers.org www.teacherview.com/ )http://career.ucsf.edu/grad-students-postdocs/teaching/teaching-resourceshttp://www.merlot.org http://www.electricteacher.com/newteacherwww.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/ www.4teachers.orgwww.teacherview.com/  Search for at least 4 online images that are related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic. (hint: Google Images, Bing etc.).  Search for at least 2 online videos that are related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic.. Copy and paste the 2 URLs (hint: YouTube, TeacherTube, National Geographic, Google videos, etc.). ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3H7PbkndOk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUApcBloiMI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrA4H9mfIgg ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3H7PbkndOkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUApcBloiMI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrA4H9mfIgg  Search for at least 3 links to books that are related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic. Copy and paste the 3 URLs (hint: google books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.). ( Effective Online Teaching Teaching Online: A Practical Guide The Excellent Online Instructor ) Effective Online TeachingTeaching Online: A Practical GuideThe Excellent Online Instructor

18. Searching for Information Effectively Dr. Nazli Hardy Adapted from Fluency with Information Technology, Lawrence Snyder Your Tasks (some of my sample answers in brackets)  If relevant, search for at least 2 online magazines/ newsletters that may be related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic. Copy and paste the URLs. ( http://www.theeducationcenter.com/ http://www.weeklyreader.com/ http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/instructor ) http://www.theeducationcenter.com/http://www.weeklyreader.com/ http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/instructor  If relevant, search for at least 2 professional societies that are related to your lesson plan/ module/ topic. Copy and paste the 2 URLs. ( www.nsta.org http://www.asanet.org/ ) www.nsta.orghttp://www.asanet.org/  Sign up for a new Gmail account that you will be using for the purposes of your blog later this week. The email address should be related to your name and your professional interests e.g. mine could be HardyCSCI or HardyInterests. And yes, you may simply use an existing one if you prefer.  Be sure to remember login and password of your new gmail address (nazlihardy11@gmail.com – I am using an existing one)nazlihardy11@gmail.com