Getting the Most out of Internet Resources
Where would you look for resources on building classroom community?
- What strategies & techniques were used in the past?
- How might info to meet this need be located effectively and efficiently?
- What new sources are available now?
- Will these new resources require new strategies and techniques?
Hopefully, one would come to the realization that many of these answers can be found via the Internet. Not only are there thousands, if not millions, of sources of information at one’s fingertips. However, with that great quantity of of information, comes the need to make one’s searches effective and efficient. Here are some areas to consider when conducting Internet searches.
Search Engines, Directories, and Meta-Searches
There are three types of tools that can provide the results you’re looking for in an Internet search. The first is the search engine. A search engine searches for webpages and documents based on keywords. Some commmon search engines are listed below.
- Identify key words and synonyms so as to narrow your search results or identify the most accurate results.
- Be specific with your searches. Identify what you’re looking for and what you want to avoid. List the most important word first and list 3-6 words to insure the most specific results.
- Advanced searching (phrases, Boolean operators,filters) can help really narrow your searches. Using advanced settings and Boolean operators can filter the results to fit your needs.
- Plurals can sometimes mislead search results. If you’re not getting the results you’re after, try the singular or plural spellings of your keyword.
- Parentheses can assist in linking specific phrases together in your searches.
- Capitalization is not often read by search engines. However, when it is, a search engine may provide results with or without capital letters if all lowercase is used. Sometimes words with capital letters dominate results if the keywords are capitalized.
- Similar pages are often offered with search results. These options may provide better or more accurate results.
- Proximity operators such as “NEAR BY”, “ADJ” (adjacent), and “NEAR” can offer results with words that should be in the same document of webpage.
- Browser find features can help one find a keyword that may not be obvious to the naked eye.
- Delicious (My Delicious)
- iKeepBookmarks
- Backflip
- Evernote
- Diigo
- My Stickies
- For fun and discovery: Stumble Upon
Hopefully these tools and tips will help make your next Internet search more productive.
From the Edu-Blogosphere
I realize many of you do not want to think about next year at this very moment. I also realize that many of you can’t help but to think about next year. So, with these things in-mind, I thought I’d share some things that have crossed my Google Reader and Twitter feed.
David Warlick asked his readers, “When you return to your classroom (or other edu-workplace), what do you wish will be there that wasn’t there this school year?” Folks then posted their wishes on Twitter with the hashtag #classwish. I wished for online presentation software could be collaborative and had non-linear possibilities. Today, Warlick compiled his results.
How would you answer David Warlick’s question? What do you wish for next year that wasn’t there this year? Really think outside the school box on this one. Who knows, we might be able to make it happen. I found the presentation software I was looking for in Zoho.
Over at Weblogg-ed, Will Richardson writes about a Time article in which the future of work is pondered. The article states, among other things, “We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values–and women will increasingly be at the controls.” Richardson then wonders…
Which would seem to me to suggest that we need to create a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative learning experience for my kids, right? If as the article states fully 40% of the US workforce is predicted to be independent contractors by 2019, shouldn’t we be rethinking what it means to prepare them for that?
How do these ideas change what you do in your classroom? My hope is that what we do in eMINTS supports this shift in education and the workplace. What do you think?
In conjuntion with the news that California (read “Cal-ee-fornia”) is dumping the textbook in favor of internet sources, I stumbled upon the blog TeachPaperless. While it claims to mainly provide educators with ideas for going paperless, the blog also gives its readers president for going tree-friendly in their classrooms. Even if you don’t care for the political slant, it’s an interesting read.
In my personal network, a friend who teaches high school English in Lincoln, NE mentions on his blog that his team of teachers is meeting to deal with plagiarism. It seems that several students have figured out how to copy and paste content from online sources onto their own papers, trying to pass the work off as their own. Have you considered this possibility in your own class? Do you have a plagiarism policy? Are you aware of ways to teach about and discover plagiarized work?
My partner sees this a lot as an English professor at the university. It’s easiest to deal with plagiarism when papers are turned in electronically. She copies the suspect content, pastes it into a Google search box, and up pops the original work. Sometimes it’s that easy; sometimes she has to search for a while.
As far as teaching about plagiarism, I have a few resources that may help:
- For you Wikipedia fans out there, there is a page with specific directions for citing the online encyclopedia of the people. Besides citation instructions, the page also offers advice such as “As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible.”
- Plagiarism.com does the Google searching for you. Just enter the offending text in the box and hit “search”. You can even set up a Google alert as soon as the same text pops up anywhere on the Internet.
- The Citation Machine takes the guessing out as it will help your students generate citations for the work they ethically use within their writing.
- Excellent guides for teaching plagiarism can be found from Colorado State University, Web English Teacher, and Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Look for me to continue updating this blog about once a week this summer with more ideas to get your next year with eMINTS off to a great start!
