Seven: Information Literacy

Now, that you have figured out how to create your very own custom search engine, let's look at some ways that you can refine your searches without creating the CSE!

With the explosion of information that exists today, the only thing that could be more important to your teaching than being information literate is being able to teach your students to be information literate! In the last decade, accessibility to "non peer reviewed information" has presented a new problem. Previously, students (and teachers) relied on authentic and reliable information found in enclyclopedias, journals, books, etc. Today, much research is done via the internet. Who can post on the Internet? ANYONE! This means that the information may, or may not, be peer reviewed. Therefore, we all must learn to use a critical eye when doing research on the internet. Take a look at this web page: The Earth Is Flat. At first glance, this might look like an authentic web page, published by Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania. However, if you know that a tilde (~) located within a web address indicates a personal web page, you would have reason to doubt the information on the page. This just one small example of why it is so VERY important to be able to to identify what information is needed, understand how the information is organized, identify the best sources of information for a given need and locate those sources.

The Internet is growing exponentially and will continue to do so! As an educator, you will need to know the tricks for finding information in this never-ending volume. Yes, we can all type some words into a search engine and hope for the best, but how do we intentionally find what we really want. There are basic search tricks and there are advanced search tricks. Since you probably have your basic search skills in place, let's skip to advanced.

Assignment ~ Activity One: Vist this site Four Nets for Searching Better. Read the introduction and then work through the four NETS activities (listed under the N E T S near the bottom). This will give you some guidelines for narrowing your searches and getting the information you really want.


 1.  On this page, Google Search Operators, there is a list of search operators that can be used to refine your Google searches.


2. This page Google Search Help, is straight from Google.  Take some time to read the following sections listed on the left: 

Operators and more search help

Search results options and tools

Assignment ~ Activity Two: Choose a search topic. Then use some of the search operators from the above mentioned documents to try to find the desired information. Each one will bring different results. Use the same topic for all of the operators so that you are able to see the difference in results as you change search criteria.

Once you are finished, you will have better idea of how to find the information you really want!

Post to your blog about your experience and how, specifically, a few of the operators changed your results.Google also has some other tricks for getting at that information.