Friday, November 9, 2012

Chapter 5

Researching and Evaluating Internet Information

Focus Question
What pieces of information do students need to know about Internet searching?
Students must know that Google ranks websites not on the accuracy or precision, but on keywords, popularity and corss-listing with other sites. This means that just because someting popped up first on your Google search, it is the most accurate or contains the best information. The more views a website has, the higher to the top of the list it gets. Web searching involves three strategies: free text, keyword/exact match, and Boolean. Also keep in mind that when you search on a resource designed for students, more age-appropriate information will be obtained.

Tech Tool Link
www.flickr.com
Flickr is a website full of many interesting pictures. I find myself using them more and more since I was introduced to this website at the beginning of this semester. With this website, one can upload our own pictures for sharing and/or use the pictures of other people. If we are using other people's pictures, we must not forget to give them credit, though. I know I'll use this website in my future teaching career. As a science teacher, I'll benefit a lot from all the pretty pictures other people share on this website.

Summary and Connection
This chapter was mainly focused on researching and evaluating internet information. I feel that I learned a lot from this chapter. I did not know that internet searching is not based on most accurate information or 'best website.' I always thought that the first result on a Google search had to be the best one. I will make sure to let my students know in the future that just because something popped up on Google as the first result, does NOT mean that it has the best information. Not only will I tell my future students, but everyone who I know does internet searching often.

1 comment:

  1. So much to learn about searching! There's a free "Power Searching" class that Google puts on and one can learn even more tips and tricks from the 'experts' - amazing! :)

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