Chapter 5: Researching and Evaluating Internet Information

Focus Question: What pieces of information do students need to know about internet searching?

Photo Credit to IvanWalsh.com on Flickr

There are many reliable search engines available but none so efficient as Google, or as useless as Bing. Google uses a system of ranking web pages by keywords, popularity, and cross-listing with other sites. Search resources can specifically provide age-appropriate information and valuable scholarly information for students of any grade level. Being able to evaluate web pages for authenticity or bias is also a very important responsibility that students need to be aware of.

Searching the internet involves three search strategies:

1. Free Text
2. Keyword/Exact Match
3. Boolean (and/or/not)

Tech Tool: Librivox
Librivox is a website that offers thousands of free audio books read by volunteers across the world and podcasts that review and discuss book, poetry, and music. Being as the audio books are free and the readers are volunteers, which often means the quality is less than professional, there is really nothing to complain about. I have used this website in the past and have been able to download Russian Classics to help me fall asleep at night and been able to download children's books and fables for my little ones. Unfortunately, if you are searching for a specific author the name needs to be spelled correctly, which is difficult with Russian names, or else there will be no results. Browsing the catalog is fun and discovering that hard to find book is rewarding but the catalog is expansive so the search might take some time. Librivox is a good website that offers free audio books but there is room for improvement and I would assume more funding is probably needed.


Summary and Connection
Chapter 5 of Transforming Learning With New Technologies was comparably less interesting than the other four chapters of the text book. The information on how to properly search the Internet is very important and plagiarism is a very serious issue in schools today, both topics covered in the text, but most of the information was already known and the authors seemed they were just getting this information out of the way. Wikipedia is a great website for information and resources but college students must already know to take it's information with a grain of salt and to not use for research purposes. The chapter did have some useful information, specifically there lists of search engines/data bases and search resources for children but all in all the chapter seemed a little lacking.

 

Resources:
Maloy, R. W., Verock-O, R. E., Edwards, S. A., & Woolf, B. P. (2010). Transforming learning with new technologies. Allyn & Bacon.