Aimhigher net literacy resource

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Aimhigher net literacy resource
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Being a Power Searcher

• Finding stuff in cyberspace is not easy
• The Internet, is an unorganised, unaccountable
  and unmanaged great steaming heap of information
  and knowledge.
• Its great! As long as we know how to use it!!
• Electronic spiders and robots are create subject
  gateways and databases.
• There are other groups of people working together
  trying to organise links to books in the trying
  to record every title and send this information
  back to search engines.
• There are also real people carefully looking for
  similar publications to pile into web portals
  (Wiki About).
• So although cyberspace is a pretty messy place,
  if you know where to look you can find the right
  way, to find the right stuff. As long as you know
  where to look!

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What is Net literacy?

• Being Net literate
• Too much browsing doesnt leave much time for
  reading. Too much cutting and pasting doesnt
  leave too much time for thinking. And too much
  reliance on Google doesnt leave too much time
  for getting it right. The secret is to use it
  when you need it, to use it the right way and to
  use it to get the best results for your needs.  
• Getting the best results
• So what can you do to get the best results, if
  you want to be Net literate how do you go about
  it? Here are few basic guidelines
• Have sufficient tools (intellectual and
  technical) to be able to use the media
  effectively.
• Know the right techniques to interrogate the
  medium
• Understanding the different sources of
  information (online and the motivation behind
  publishing)
• Develop a critical and informed approach to
  information searching

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Why the net is good for learning

• Good reasons for using the Internet
• There are lots of good reasons for using the
  Internet for school and college work. Here are a
  few of them, (you may be able to think of more)
• Its easy to access
• It comes to you, you dont go to it.
• Its contemporary and up to date.
• It provides disintermediation (direct access to
  leading authorities)
• The scale (Its huge)
• It has great variety and allows access to
  alternative perspectives
• Web browsers are easy to use
• Search tools exist to help us.
• When you look at this list there is one thing
  that stand out as important to all these
  characteristics and that is convenience, its
  easy to access and easy to use.

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Why the net is bad for learning

• Be cautious of information that you access online
  
• There are a number of good reasons that you
  should be cautious of information that we access
  online. That is not to say that we cant use it,
  just that we have to consider a number of
  important issues before we do. The Internet can
  be bad for leaning for the following reasons
• How do we know that the information that we find
  online is accurate
• How do we know that the information that we find
  online is valid
• How do we know that the information that we find
  online is complete.
• How do you know who has published something
  online?
• How do you know why they have published it?
• If anyone can publish to the Internet how can we
  trust what we read?

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Using the net and web

• Something else to think about is how hard the
  Internet is to use.
• Search engines seem simple, but are extremely
  complex technologies.
• Web browsing is tiring and requires a lot of
  concentration. Web sites are often badly designed
  and leave users disorientated and confused.
• Web pages themselves are often difficult to
  navigate and the temptation to simply cut n
  paste whatever we find leaves us open to
  plagiarism.
• It is also hard to keep up to date with
  developments on the internet, so we can never be
  sure whether we are using the best information
  source or the best search technique.

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Search skills

• Searching skills are important because they
  enable you to
• Adopt a systematic approach to finding what you
  want (This means you dont waste too much time
  retrieving references either from books or the
  web which are not related to your topic or
  project.)
• Identify the general topic of the search and find
  out which are the important and current issues
  related to the subject
• Identify key words for your search
• Link these key words to produce a useful and
  relevant search
• Broaden and narrow your search so you can focus
  on more specific aspects of your topic

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Trusting online information

• Objective techniques
• When we start working out how to trust a web site
  what we can do is use a number of objective
  heuristic techniques to help us come to the best
  subjective conclusion we can. We can never be
  sure that we are 100 right, but the more we use
  then and the more we think about them the better
  we will do.
• Authority and reputation
• Do you know who wrote it and whether they have
  credibility?
• Accuracy
• Can you tell whether it is factually accurate?
• Currency
• Is it up to date?
• Coverage
• Is the source comprehensive or specialist?
• Usability
• Is the source easy to use?

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How search engines work

• Spiders, bots and crawlers
• Are small computer programmes that visit every
  web page on the internet and sending the details
  of what they find back to the search engines that
  sent them.
• These details could include the title of the web
  pages, the most frequent words on the web page,
  the content of the web page or the links on the
  web page.
• Whatever is sent back becomes the raw information
  (or index) that the search engine uses to
  subsequently find a web page.
• The thing to remember is that not every web page
  is crawled, not every crawler sends back the same
  information and not every search engine searches
  it the same way. Plus this is NOT a very
  sophisticated process it is about indexing the
  most pages, not the best pages.

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Google me!

• It is worth trying to understand why Google is
  seen by many people as the best search engine on
  the web.
• Google tries to work out if one webpage is more
  relevant than an other one.
• So that in a list of web pages on Google the most
  relevant is at the top the least relevant at
  the bottom.
• They way that they have done this is to count the
  number of web pages that link to another web
  page. In that linking is one indication of the
  importance or relevance of the information in
  that page. Lots of links means very relevant. Few
  links means, little relevance.

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Developing a search stratgey

• 1. Before you start Think about search
  terms/expressions
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• 2. Turn this into one phrase e.g. David Beckham
  at Manchester United.
• 3. Select your search tool (e.g. search engine)
  according to its suitability and start your
  search.
• 4. Review the results from your initial search
  and see whether your search produced too many or
  too few results.
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• 5. Make appropriate changes to your search
  terms/expressions for example
• Use different (but similar) words. Try a
  thesaurus if you have one.
• Add or remove one of your concepts.
• Try your phrase in quotation marks "David Beckham
  at Manchester United", this often makes a search
  very specific and can turn up good results when
  there are too many options.
• Familiarise yourself with the advanced search
  features of search engine you are using
• Try using Bollean operators a well established
  way of refining searches.

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Web search checklist

• Authority and reputation
• Do you know who wrote it and whether they have
  credibility?
• Is it an established organisation (e.g. BBC) or
  an established author (e.g. Stephen Hawking)
• Accuracy
• Can you tell whether it is factually accurate?
• Is it biased? Does it represent one side of a
  story?
• Can you cross check this information from
  another source
• Currency
• Is it up to date ?
• Can you see a publication date on the source?
• Should you be looking for a more recent source?

• Coverage
• Is the source comprehensive or specialist?
• Is there a site map that shows the scale of the
  content?
• Is it a credible source (see above - Authority
  and reputation)
• Usability
• Is the source easy to use?
• Does it look well designed?
• Can you easily see what information is available?
  
• Can you easily navigate from page to page without
  being confused?