All About Internet Searches,
Web Domains,
&
Evaluating Web Sites

As you search through the sites below, write answers to the questions on your web quest sheet.

Internet Searches: Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) has put together some great information on searching the world wide web.

About Search Engines After you're here, read the page and click on the link to try the search engine tutorial. Follow the directions. The tutorial shows in the frame on the left and the search engine shows in the frame on the right.

Meta Search Engines How are they different? Try the tutorial for this one too.

Simple and Advanced (Boolean) Searches Sometimes typing in a word or name will get us thousands of results that we don't need. Think of what would happen if you were researching drugs in a library. A librarian might point you to 1,000 books on drugs, everything from aspirin to Zocor. But what you really wanted was to know about the effects of LSD on the brain. So once you specify that, he or she might get you three books. Narrowing your Internet search will also save you time and give you more effective results.

What are the four Boolean operators? Be ready to name them and tell when you'd use them.

Web Domains:
.com/commercial--for profit
.org/organization--non profit
.edu/educational institution
.gov/government site
.net/network site, ISP, etc.

Sites in for profit domains are generally less reliable sources of information for research. The best sources of information for research tend to come from .org, .edu, and .gov sites.

Evaluating Web Sites:
Web sites can be evaluated on some specific general qualities: authority, objectivity, accuracy, currency, and visual presentation. You will be using a web evaluation form later on to evaluate your cyber partner's web site. Take a look at that form.

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