Assignment #3:
1- Watch the following videos about Search Tips and Tricks
c. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa66AxTbjxA&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1
2- Choose a topic that your students might need to research in your subject area. Perform some searches about this topic with and without the tricks you learned about in the videos.
3- Respond to this blog post, and tell me
a. What you searched for
b. What effect the searching tips and tricks had on your results. Please give a thorough response, and answer in no fewer than 5 complete sentences.
Vanessa Medlock
ReplyDeleteSearch Topic: Geometry concept of tessellations (repeating pattern of polygons that covers a plane with no gaps or overlaps).
1. My initial search was just the word “tessellation”. Pages 1 and 2 of the Google search provided primarily sites for definitions of the word.
2. Using the connector “and”, I conducted a second search using “tessellation and lessons”. Page 1 of the Google search resulted in sites offering help lessons and tutorials. As I viewed the sites on the first page, there was one identifying an interactive site. Since this concept is about putting polygons together, a site where the students could construct the tessellation virtually would be helpful towards understanding the concept.
3. Therefore, my next search was “tessellation and (lessons or interactive)”. This search resulted in a variety of web-based interactive tools.
4. I also did a search of a site that I have used before entitled “mathisfun”. Searching in the geometry section of this site, I found additional helpful hints on tessellations.
In general, the search tools addressed in this web learning combined with knowledge of specific sites facilitate a more directed search thereby taking a lot less time to get the information needed.
The research topic I chose was “influential figures in math.” Just by using this in my search bar, I was directed to a lot of history sites in which I would waste time searching through these sites to even find someone I would want to research. They were very generic in nature and did not provide the needed detail. The first tool I used from the videos was the “search by site type.” This was not a very useful tip for this particular research topic because it appeared to give me websites for teachers to use in their classroom, not for people actually researching the topic. The next tools I used were using the boolean operators and synonyms. I searched the following: “(figures or people or mathematicians) and (math or mathematics or algebra) and (influential or famous or historical)”. This took me to several websites where you could just click on the link to determine who you would like to do your project on and gives a great start to researching an influential figure in math. I believe the “search by site type” is a great tool when it is appropriate; however, I love the boolean and synonym tool especially when used together. I will definitely use these tools in my next search.
ReplyDeletea. I chose to search for a topic from a true project I had in an entry-level geometry class, to find and give examples of geometric principles used in famous architecture.
ReplyDeleteb. On my first search, I used the complete phrase of the project. The results for this search were exhaustive, over 880K result sites found. Much of the information found for this search was not even relative to the entire search topic but only to certain words or phrases within the search topic. When the search topic was narrowed down to just key concepts the search results were reduced by 25% to just over 600K result sites found. This is again an exhaustive amount of results, but this time the first few sites listed were much more specific to the actual search topic and could be viable links for this type of project. I then searched my topic utilizing just the key phrases and the “sites:edu” concept introduced in the video clip. This narrowed the search results by more than half to 270K results. I stopped reviewing after searching through five pages, but found that almost every link within those 5 pages was relative and specific enough to utilize when researching the project. I found that the more tricks I used in combination with each other, the more relevant the information was to the search topic and it created a much easier search.
A potential homework assignment for my students would be to identify five universities that offer a computer science degree and then explain what type of career opportunities would be available.
ReplyDeleteBefore applying the tricks and tips I ran a search like I normally would and found very minimal information. However, when I searched by using “computer science site:edu” the result showed me a list of universities that offered computer science degrees. I changed my search to only include colleges and universities in Mississippi and again the search results only listed the colleges and university in Mississippi.
My findings were the same for the second part of my question. I searched using the Boolean/synonyms (jobs or careers) and (degree) and (computer science) and found an abundance of information.
By understanding how to utilize the internet efficiently, it would definitely reduce your research time. I could see real benefits to having cellular phones, Ipads and etc in class. This would give the students a huge advantage to understanding the subject and retaining the information. It would also be beneficial to the teachers as well. These type of techniques would enable the teacher to find helpful websites that aids the student’s learning process. I think, it is a win-win situation for all!
The question that I would want my students to answer is "what are some characteristics of romantic poetry." Simply typing in the question to google got a lot of information, and occasionally a correct answer, most notably on the second link. (http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/29741.aspx) however, the search was too wide and many of the pages brought up had information on Romantic poetry, but no characteristics are given.
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly, when simply narrowing this search to .edu sites, very few have an answer and are more likely to be narrowly focused on a specific thesis and not on characteristics of Romantic poetry.
Finally the most effective search was using Boolean Operators. By searching for (characteristics or traits) AND (romantic poetry)I was able to find many sites with correct information on the first few pages.
I decided to do a general assignment on modern takes on Shakespeare to show that his work is still relevant today. My assignment is to go out and find information on how Shakespeare’s themes are being used in modern storylines. The first thing I did was search without using any search tools, and typed “modern takes on Shakespeare” in Google. I got pages and pages of hits. Some of them seem promising, although one required downloading plug-ins, etc., but I also got things on Shakespeare’s sonnets, how to understand Shakespeare, other pages that didn’t meet my needs and a lot of links to books online.
ReplyDeleteNext, I tried using keywords like Shakespeare/modern/adaptation, and used the word “and” to narrow the search, weeding out the pages I did not need. This new search brought me a much tighter list with titles to articles that seem much more useful, including “The Best Move adaptations,” from helium.com, and “Modern Film Adaptations of Shakespeare” from Fathom.com. Unfortunately, these .com sites are just not based in research, and really can’t be used for the assignment.
Finally, I decided to try using a combination of key concepts with a Google trick to limit my search to .edu sites. From this, I got mainly reviews of school plays. I tweaked it more and typed in “site:edu Shakespeare and modern and adaptation.” This lead me to one really good journal, that has articles about Shakespeare today, and also lists contributors, and other links that I would advise a student to do searches with as well, to see what comes up. For example, Amy Scott-Douglas is a contributer that wrote “Shakespeare: It’s What’s For Dinner.” I would then do a search in google for Shakespeare and Amy Scott-Douglas to see what else she has posted on Shakespeare.
I don't think I would have found such an article with just typing the assignment title in the search bar. The tricks and tools are really pretty cool - I will have to play with them more.
Search Topic: What evidences are there to support the idea of Global Warming over the last 100 years?
ReplyDeleteTo begin the search using google as our search platform I had my supposed students to narrow the topic into keywords. I had them choose 3 different synonyms for each of their keywords. The 3 different keyword phrases were: 1) global warming, climate changes, severe weather 2) temperature, greenhouse effect, increased gas volume 3) atmosphere, burning fossil fuels, polar ice caps.
Using "and/or" as ways to group and thread words and phrases for searching I first did individual searches of each phrase of words.
The first phrase was grouped like this: global warming and climate changes and severe weather. The search brought up 481,000 results.
The second phrase: temperature, greenhouse effect, increased gas volume. This search resulted in 410,000 results.
The third phrase: atmosphere, burning fossil fuels, polar ice caps. This search resulted in 133,000 results.
To even further define and narrow the search I grouped all three phrases with brackets and grouped the brackets with the word "and". This resulted in 52,800 results that included all 3 of the phrases.
I found that the search results became more refined and more specific as the keywords and synonyms were generated and they were further refined as I threaded the phrases together. Ultimately, I went from a total result of 481,000 down to 52,300.