When folks think of internet information searches, I’d wager most people think of Google, Yahoo, or Wikipedia. While these tools are fantastic, they barely scratch the surface of what is available on the web. This week’s unit opened my eyes to the vast amount of resources available. Most web searches are easier than periodical database searches because they use natural language features. Web searches are good for finding quick but not necessarily thorough answers to questions. The web is a great resource for practical questions such as lesson plan ideas or finding examples classroom layout designs. They are also excellent resources for networking, like listservs, chatrooms, and bulletin boards.
This week’s unit also reinforced my belief that teachers must guide student’s research online. Learning how to use web searches effectively is an excellent way to develop critical thinking skills, such as synthesizing data. Many students come into the classroom with plenty of experience with social media and the web but don’t understand how to filter through the avalanche of information available. In addition to teaching how to search effectively, teachers must show students how to evaluate the information on websites. Anyone can post to the internet, which is both a benefit and drawback. It means all information must be looked at with a discerning eye.
One search engine I tried this week was Yippy.com, a site I had never heard of before. Yippy.com is a metasearch engine. It queries Ask, Open Directory, Gigablast and others. It groups similar results into clouds. According to yippy.com, “Clouds help you see a topical overview of your search results so you can hone in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items” (http://search.yippy.com/help-clusteranatomy). I was surprised that Yippy.com provided the best resources. My “periodical database education” search retrieved over 9,400,000 results total and Yippy provided the top 207.
Yippy’s cloud feature reminded me of the search subject feature I used in the periodical databases. From my original search, Yippy created over 20 clouds of related information. Clicking on one cloud gave me smaller results of 12 to 20 related topics. Picking one of the clouds brought me to an ERIC link for an article titled, “Six Online Databases: A Librarian’s View” by Harry Willems (Source Book Report, v17 n5 p47-51 Mar-Apr 1999). However, the full text was not available through the web search. I went back to the Hatch Library databases and searched the EBSCO database and found the full article, which my inner geek thought was totally cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment