Miss Hetro's Classroom
1. What are people searching for today?
Today, people are searching for Inherent Vice, and Rod Taylor. Inherent Vice has 50,000+ searches, and Rod Taylor has 20,000+ searches.
2. Make a list of five search techniques that you would give to your students (or other persons if you are not and Education major) to help them conduct effective Internet searches. Be sure to identify the grade level and if applicable, and the subject area.
- Search for the key words that you want to find in your results. Really think about what you’re looking for. Be specific.
- Search for different variations of your key words if you don’t find what you’re looking for.
- Look at the search description for each link that comes up. This will let you know if it might be something you are looking for.
- If there is more than one page in your results, look into them! You may not find what you’re looking for on the first page.
- If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try another search engine.
3. List 3 search ENGINES that you use or COULD use other than Google. List in order of importance to you. Give a description of each search tool's distinguishing qualities. Be sure to give the name and address of each site.
Bing: http://www.bing.com
Bing is an interesting search engine because it changes its daily background image daily. Each day, you can click on the new image and learn more about it. Bing also provides instant answers to questions relating to sports, finance, mathematics, spell check, etc. This search engine is also integrated with Apple and is used with Siri.
Yahoo Search: https://search.yahoo.com
Yahoo Search is the third largest search engine on the web. It supports HTML, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, RSS/XML, and plain text files. It includes SearchScan, which is an add-on feature, which will alert users of viruses, spyware, and spam web sites. You can also search for additional sources such as images, videos, shopping, jobs, news, etc.
KidRex: http://www.kidrex.org
KidRex is a search engine that is child-safe. It’s powered by Google, and it maintains its own database of inappropriate web sites and key words so children can search safely. On the home page, there is a kid friendly hand-drawn crayon and marker design.
4. Most people use Google. What is the danger of this? What are some alternative ways to avoid relying on Google for everything? Write a short paragraph (5 to 10 sentences) that responds to these questions.
When using Google, the search engine is searching so many sources that it is hard to narrow down your search, especially for children. Using Google, you can search scholarly articles, but you are also searching through .com, .org, .edu, etc. web sites. When searching so many different addresses, it’s hard to figure out what sources are reliable. It can take a long time to eventually find what you want and determine if it’s a credible source. Although Google is great because it searches so many places, it can hurt you too. In addition to Google, it would be beneficial to search online databases as well as other search engines, so you are looking at a variety of different resources for information. It also helps determine whether or not you are finding reliable information because you can compare everything.
5. What search engine do you use? Google
What do you do if you don't get the necessary information on the first search? I type in different key words and rearrange them to see if I get different results.
What are your favorite features of this search engine? I like to use Google because of how many resources it searches. I am aware that there are bad web sites and information on there, but I search until I find something reliable. I like the features of Google because it searches the web and also narrows down shopping, images, videos, etc. I can just click on the different tabs to find exactly what I want. I also really like that I can find scholarly articles using Google, as they are useful for school.
6. Go to this site and list the number 1, 2, and 3 search engines and their percentages:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-201312-201412-bar
Did you know the top three sites? Did this information surprise you?
- Google: 88.48%
- Bing: 4.34%
- Yahoo!: 3.5%
I did not know for sure that these were the three top sites, but if I had to guess these would have been my three guesses. I actually chose Bing and Yahoo! as my alternate search engines just because these are the ones that I am familiar with. The information doesn’t surprise me, but the percentages do. I knew Google was the most popular, but I did not realize so many people use it over the rest of the search engines.
7. Want to compare listings search engines give you for the same search term? Go to: Google VS Yahoo Tool http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html
Note: Type in various search terms in the box. The connected solid dotes represent the site position (ranking) on each web site. If the dot is blank, it is not found on the OTHER search engine. Write a short statement (5-10 sentences) explaining what this site does and what you learned from this site about searching!
This site compares web sites that are found on both Google and Yahoo. When you type in something to search, it compares where the site is on each search engine. They show the connections with dots and lines to make the connection of where each exact site is compared to the other. Using this site, I searched many different things to see how Google and Yahoo really compare. It was surprising to me that every thing I searched came up closer in Yahoo. There were dots in Google very far to the right linked to dots in Yahoo way closer to the left. This tells me that Yahoo may actually help me find what I’m looking for faster than Google. I will definitely search on more search engines from now on. This was really interesting!
8. Want to see if your search term is on the web by different clusters (try your name)? Go to: Clusty http://clusty.com/
Write a short statement (2 -5 sentences) on your reaction to this site!
I like this web site because it allows you to filter your results on the left once you search. You can choose from a variety of different topics that your search was found in. You can also narrow your results by sources, sites, and times. They can really help for faster searching!
9. Want to easily try multiple search engines? Go to: LightSwitch http://www.thrall.org/lightswitch/general.html
Write a short statement (2 -5 sentences) on your reaction to this site!
I wasn’t aware that there was a web site like this. I like that you are easily able to switch your search engine and open up searches in different windows. This is great for comparing information on different search engines. It also helps for fast switching back and forth.
10. Search for yourself on the web. Also search for yourself in Google images. What were the results? Did you learn anything?
After searching for myself, I found a lot about myself on the honor roll in high school as well as the cheerleading team. There was also a lot of my grandfather’s obituaries with my name in them. After searching in Google images I was shocked to see two pictures of myself. When I search “Rebecca Hetro” I get a lot of academic things, but when I search “Becky Hetro”, that’s when all of the social media and pictures show up.
11. Visit the Wikipedia List of Search Engines. Write a short statement (2 -5 sentences) on your reaction to this site!
This site is very helpful because it breaks down all of the different search engines. I have never heard of most of these so it’s a good resource for me to hold on to. I really like how it breaks down the search engines into categories.
