1. Internet Search Tools and Strategies
Powell County Technology Day
July 31, 2009
Jennifer Francis – Media Specialist, Bowen Elementary

2. Ice-breaker Introduce yourself to the group
who are you, what do you do?
Tell us what your favorite search engine is

3. Purpose of Today's Workshop
Introduce you to some different search tools
Demonstrate some different search strategies
Explore some possible tools to use with students when they're searching

4. Review Browser Features
Internet Explorer – type of browser – there are others, but we use this one at school
Menubar
Toolbars
Newest update of IE has “tabbed browsing”
URL and address box
For first few slides – use demonstration mode with projector to explain key internet terminology and the major types of search tools: search engines, ports, meta-search, and directory.

5. Search Engines:
Indexing the words on every page in their database (full text searching), a search engine covers Web pages and can include trillions of pages.

6. Meta-Search Engines Search engines that search search engines 
Advantages - broad feel for what is "out there" on your topic. Some offer help with narrowing a topic such as Clusty.

7. Directory:
A subject directory includes selected  Web sites (more often than pages) and humans classify them into hierarchical subject categories. Most portals have one and some specialized directories are available by themselves.
They do not index every word on every page included (subject searching as opposed to full text searching).

8. Portals:
Offer a combined search, directory, and many other general services such as , free home page building, news, popular topics, etc. Well-known ones include Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

9. Search Engines vs. Directories
Index and Directories
e.g. Google, Ask, Yahoo (many of these now have directory built in)
uses "spiders" to crawl net and find key words
Kids Click, Yahooligans, Librarian's Index to the Internet (LII)
catalogued by subject and usually reviewed by cataloger for content
Index is a subject list - directory goes a step further with hierarchy (subjects get progressively more narrow)

10. Search Engines vs. Directories
Index/Directories
Strengths: the volume of pages searched, over a trillion by Google
Strengths: sites have been reviewed by the cataloger for relevance and quality
Safer search environment for students
Weaknesses: Its strength can sometimes be it’s weakness (volume of information)
Web designers can plant nonrelevant keywords in their hidden html and deceive the spiders (e.g. make a porn or shopping site appear to be about something else)
Weaknesses: Directory is only as good as the cataloger (if their content knowledge is weak,)
Searching within directory is only as good as the quality of the subject words attached to sites (if lazy and didn't add many key words or good key words, it will be hard to search)

11. Activity Go to http://www.powell.k12.ky.us/jfrancis/search.htm
Elementary/Middle people: Try searching the term human body at Google, Yahooligans, KidsClick, and Ask for Kids. Note the number of hits and the type of hits
Middle/High School: Try searching the term civil rights at Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Web Directory, and LII. Note the number of hits and the type of hits

12. The Point?
Search engines returned many more hits. Some useful, some not. Have to weed a lot to find useful info. Credibility of some sites questionable.
Directory returned fewer hits, but more focused on topic - also many of the directories allow "Trace searches" to occur increasing the number of relevant references.

13. Search Engine Strategies
Boolean Searching
Often + is symbol for AND
- symbol for NOT OR
These can be especially useful commands with homographs like bass, sound, bow
Try bass then bass -fish -fishing at Google
Come up with a strategy for searching sound as in the body of water.

14. Search Engine Strategies
Phrase searching
Enclose phrases in quotes to get a more precise search (can also catch internet plagiarism this way!
Observe the number and preciseness of hits with the following Google searches:
1st try - drug use athletes
then - "drug use among athletes"
finally - "drug use among high school athletes"

15. Finding Info on a Retrieved Page
Ever retrieve a page or document and it’s so long you don’t have time to read down to find what you need?
To very quickly find the concept you are looking for on a page –
Click EDIT on the menubar then click FIND ON THIS PAGE and enter the term you want it to find.

16. Advanced Search Features
differ depending on the tool being used. Can usually find them by clicking "advanced search or help" see handout
Some favorites:
searching by file type
Advanced Search at Google: search by pdf's, ppts, and others
Yahoo can search for Audio (songs/sounds), Video, and Images
specific commands
Google's command define: to get a definition in a hurry

17. Nesting
in boolean searching, a set of search terms arranged sequentially within a larger set; the order in which terms are set may determine the nature of the retrieved results. An example of nesting is: humans AND (genetic engineering OR cloning).
Nesting can't be used at all sites - can be done at Yahoo (and I've found it handy on EBAY! e.g. want a sweater with either ladybugs or butterflies on it)

18. Natural Language Search Engines
Account for how a person would ask a question about a topic (e.g. like Ask or AskforKids)
Go to one of these sites and try a natural language search

19. URL
Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Can sometimes guess these. Example: url for Amazon bookstore is However, the URL guessing strategy can lead to wrong guesses which retrieve sites that may pretend to be something that they are not. Strongly discourage using this at work or with students! Suffix is also indicator of credibility of website.
.com = commercial site
.gov or .mil = U.S. government site
.edu = U.S. higher education site
. org for other organizations, but can be used by anyone
.net for networks, but can be used by anyone
Can you guess the url for Harvard University? for US Environmental Protection Agency?

20. URL Trimming
Can also sometimes trim back a URL when you've done a search and find something helpful to "TRACE" or backmap to more potentially useful pages. Trim back to slashes.
Example
Watch what happens when we trim back to the nearest slash.

21. Other Search Tools
There are tons of other online search tools such as online dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias.
Advantage of online dictionaries/electronic dictionaries is that guide words are not needed to gain access.
Explore some of the various search tools at

22. Research Tool you can Use
Trackstars
can create webliographies for students to provide structure when searching and teach them strategies to use to search in the annotations. You have to register for this. Also note that 4teachers.org has other great cutting edge educational tools to use!
Example Track Number

23. Wrap up
Share one resource or tip you found/got that you can use

24. Take Home Messages Variety of search tools
Search engines are full text searching tools with billions of pages in their databases
Directories are subject searching and are catalogued. Fewer pages in databases but pages have been reviewed.
Quotes are an easy way to narrow a search with phrase searching. +, - , OR
Advanced Search or Help at search tools can open your eyes to a variety of strategies.