wwwsearchstrategies

= = =WWW Search Strategies=

Activity #1 Search Engines
I focused on search engines designed for kids. When comparing [|www.askkids.com] and [|www.kidsclick.org] I found the following:
 * Askkids looks more like a traditional search engine and has more streamlined look.
 * Kidsclick can be used traditionally by typing in the word to search, or students can click on a list of topics to narrow the search or to give them ideas of words or phrases to search.
 * I administered the "porn test" to both sites by searching for "chicks". Askkids pulled up several possibilities including two inappropriate sites. Kidsclick pulled up only three possibles: one for the Dixie Chicks, one for Easter chicks, and one for falcons. Each of these three offered an alternate search word. Under falcons it gave me the option of the broader search "birds".
 * When I chose the option to search for birds, kidsclick pulled up 36 different kinds of birds, each with articles written specifically for kids.
 * Each article listed by kidsclick includes the reading level.

Activity #2 Using Quotation Marks

 * I searched for Tulsa, Oklahoma without quotation marks and was given 3,607 sites. When I used quotation marks I was given 1,804.
 * I searched for Thoreau Demonstration Academy without quotation marks and was given 5,200 sites. When I used quotation marks I was given 2,830.

Activity #3 Boolean Operators

 * I wanted to find out if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were divorcing, so I searched for Tom Cruise AND Katie Holmes AND divorce. It successfully narrowed my search to articles talking about the possibility of their divorce.
 * I searched for lion NOT cartoon and it narrowed my search to mainly articles about the real animal, but it also pulled up a couple of web sites of restaurants that had the word lion in the name.

Activity #4 Who Owns These Web Sites

 * I was anxious to find out who owned sleds.com because my sons typed that URL into the address bar and it pulled up an amazon.com site, however, it maintained the URL sleds.com in the address bar. The company listed as the owner of this site is Moniker Privacy Services.
 * I then searched to see who was listed as the owner of tulsahope.com, a web site for a charitable organization run by my husband. He "owns" the site, but the owner is listed as Host Monster, the company that hosts his site.

Activity #5 Domains

 * It was easy to find out that .aero is a domain only available to airline-related sites.
 * It was more difficult to find out what .name was for. I had to use Boolean operators and search for .name AND domain NOT name. I discovered that .name is for personal name web site registration. (For example, John.Doe.name.)

Activity #6
I was not able to successfully complete this activity.

Activity #7
I was not able to successfully complete this activity. When I typed in "host:edu+turtle" it didn't pull up anything about universities with turtle in their names. However, it did pull up a web site that had a PowerPoint presentation by Alan November containing a lot of the information we are working on in this module. I saved the presentation to My Documents in a folder with other documents from this class.

Activity #8 Google Help Features
I tried the following services available on Google Help:
 * Time: I found out that at 8:46 PM CST, it is 11:46 PM in Santiago, Chile.
 * People Profiles: I searched for Elizabeth Brown Graff, a friend of mine from elementary school. It pulled up lots of Facebook pages for different Elizabeth Graffs, but none were my friend.
 * Unit Conversion: I found out that 60 ml is equivalent to two ounces.
 * Health Watch: I searched for "hepatoblastoma", the type of cancer my son had. There was no Google Health article available, but it pulled up a very current article from a medical journal. I found out that the cure rate has improved in the last six years, from 85% to 100% when it is isolated to the liver.
 * Currency Conversion: I found out that $60 US is equivalent to $63.8039941 Canadian.

Activity #9 Sharing
I shared my findings about using [|www.kidsclick.org] as a search engine with my school library media specialist. She had never used kidsclick and was interested in the fact that the articles include reading levels.

Activity #10 Sharing
I shared the Google Help site with my husband. Both of us have used many of the tools available on this site, but always had to find them by doing a google search. We agreed that saving this site in our favorites will allow us to more readily access these tools.