Professional Development
Searching the Internet
Searching the Internet
The Internet has been called the world's largest library, the only problem is that all the books are on the floor. There is no central registry for organizing or identifying Websites, so finding what you are looking for can be frustrating!
Five Ways to Find What You Are Looking For
1. Guess!
For example, if you wanted to go to the Website for MIT, you could deduce that the address might be www.mit.edu . Most Websites for organizations and institutions will use the organization's name or acronym in their address. Knowing the right domain extension to add to that name or acronym is often all you need to find a site! You might also have luck finding content sites this way. For example, if you are looking for sites about coral reefs you might guess that chances are any site about coral reefs would likely be from a non-profit group, so the address coralreef.org might be a good guess. You would be right, that is the address for the International Coral Reef Action Network. You might also have tried coralreef.com. Never guess with students as you never know what you are going to get!
US Domain Abbreviations
org non-profit - pbs.org
mil US military - navy.mil
com commercial - redsox.com
net network - verizon.net
edu : educational institution - ucla.edu
gov: U.S. government - whitehouse.gov
Every country has a two letter domain extension. For example, France is fr and Canada is ca. For a complete list of domain extensions, click here.
2. Be Told
Over the course of a day you are probably exposed to dozens of Website addresses. You hear them on the radio, see them on television, read them in magazines, journals, newsletter, and newspapers, your hear them from friends, students or co-workers. If you belong to a professional organization, chances are journals or newsletters from that organization review and recommend Websites. Being told often is a great way to locate sites that are of interest to you as you are exposed to sited based on your lifestyle! A great exercise for you and your class is to track Website you are exposed to over a period or time and then analyze the types of sites you were "told about." What can you determine about who others think you are based on the sites you were exposed to?
3. Stumbling
Many people call this surfing. Stumbling is a better term, as real surfing calls for some level of training and skill. Stumbling is when you are on the Web, click a link, then click another link and then two hours later you have no idea how you ended up at the site you are currently looking at! This is not the most effective way to locate sites if you a randomly clicking. To raise stumbling to the level of surfing, students need to be able to know what they are looking for strategically follow links to find that information.
4. Directories
Directories are organized and reviewed listings of Websites. They can be large and general or small and focused. Directories can be organized by organizations or institutions or they can be created by individuals. They key to directories is that a person has looked at the site and determined that it has some value to others. Because people are looking at the sites, the relevancy and content of the sites are often more carefully reviewed than if a search engine "looked" at the site. You will find directories for almost any topic you could possible think of. For example, here is a directory to butterfly Websites: Butterflies
Individuals who create directories often don't know that they have created a directory! To find content specific directories on the Web, go to Google and type in your topic and then type in Websites. You might also try the word links. This will usually return sites with lists of links to the content you are looking for.
Here are some examples of results using that technique:
Big List of Volcano Websites
American Literature Sites
Children's Literature Web Guide
5. Search Engines
Search engines use computer programs called spiders or robots that browse through sites and record common words and phrases along with other information. This data is then returned to the search engine where it is classified, analyzed, and ranked. When you enter a term in the search engine, it then accesses its database and returns sites that meet your search term. When you search using a search engine, you are not searching the Web, you are searching the search engine's databases. This is why you often get links to sites that no longer exist. The site has either moved or been taken down since the date the search engine visited it and when you did your search. Because computer programs analyze the content of the sites visited, they do not check the quality of the information at the site. That is why if you search for "tigers" and are looking for the animal, you will get results for the animals, teams named tiger, and lots of other hits that have nothing to do with the mammal.
|
|
Search Tools
For Students
Yahooligans
This is the largest directory for kids. In addition to Websites it also has online video, jokes, animal profiles, horoscopes, games, and more.
Kids Click
This directory is organized by school librarians. It can be search by keyword, first letter, or topic.
Kids Connect
This directory has sites for kids organized by topic area.
Internet Public Library Kids' Space
This directory from the University of Michigan has reviewed Websites in a variety of areas like science, social studies, math, music, art, and reading.
Fact Monster
Fact Monster is a neat little reference site with basic information about a whole host of topics. It is a good site for quick reference information.
Ask Jeeves for Kids
Ask Jeeves for Kids lets users type in a question instead of a search term, actually any search engine will let you do this, Ask Jeeves for Kids uses this as a hook and for young students it's not a bad hook! Students in grades K-4 are often not developmentally able to come up with search words or terms. The site doesn't answer questions, it points students to Websites where they may find the answers.
ThinkQuest Library
These are Website designed by teams of students for an annual Web design contest. There are some amazing sites in this library and while they shouldn't be used as credible research sites, they are a great way to get students started on a topic.
For the Teacher
Surfin' the Net with Kids
Barbara Feldman (not Agent 99) reviews Websites for kids focusing on a new theme or topic every week.
Berit's Best
This site reviews Websites appropriate for young children.
GEM - The Gateway to Educational Materials
This site reviews and catalogues educational sites from credible sources like museums, universities, and other educational organizations.
Google
This simple and clean search engine returns sites based on popularity among other criteria. It is currently regarded as the best search engine.
Yahoo
This site has a search engine as well as special search tools.
USA Today Tech Space
This is a great site for finding the latest and coolest Websites! Everyday they review 3-4 hot Websites. Because USA Today is the largest national newspaper, it tends to find out about new and exciting sites before the general public. Over the course of a week there are usually 3-4 sites that could be used in a classroom.
The Internet Archive
Has a site disappeared? Not to worry, this site is archiving the Web. As long as you know the Web address, you can go to this site and access the as it was all the way back to 1997. This is a great place to take students to show them how the Internet has changed in the past few years. In addition to archiving Websites, the site is also collecting public domain music, film, and other resources. |
|
Classroom Exchanges
Epals
This site lets you connect with students and teachers from around the world in a safe, controlled online environment. You can create a free classroom account with up to 35 student accounts. All email is restricted to other schools and students using the service. You can search for teachers looking to do an email exchange and you can post a profile of your class and the type of exchange you would like to participate in. You will also find more involved classroom projects at the site, a teacher discussion board, and guide to using the service in the classroom with teaching tips and ideas.
Scholastic Classport
Scholastic's Global Classport lets you communicate with classrooms in 182 countries, and collaborate with teachers around the world. It is powered by ePALS and provides the same types of teacher controls and filters.
Top
Plants and Animals
Enature
Explore plants and animals at this site that features online field guides.
Wildlife Journal, Junior
Learn more about New Hampshire and North American wildlife at this site for grades 4-8 from the NHPTV Knowledge Network.
Animal Diversity Web
This site from the University of Michigan Department of Zoology features profiles of hundreds of animals from around the world.
Top
Places
CIA World Factbook
How many kilometers of paved road are there in Sweden? (162,707) What is the birth rate in Chile? (16.46 births/1,000) What is Madagascar's form of government? (republic) This site from the CIA provides a wealth of statistics about countries, territories, and principalities around the globe.
Library of Congress Country Studies
This online series presently contains studies of 100 countries. Each study is written by a multidisciplinary team of social scientists. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order.
NH Community Profiles
http://webster.state.nh.us./soiccnh/idxcompr.htm
This site has information on all 234 of New Hampshire's communities. Each profile has data on population, climate, distance to major cities and airports, schools, hospitals, taxes, utilities, major employers, municipal and community services, housing, local economic development contact, nearest colleges, golf courses, libraries, educational facilities, home page URLs, cellular telephone coverage, libraries, and more.
Find-A-Grave
http://www.orci.com/personal/jim/index.html
Find out where famous dead people are buried. You can look up graves by names or by places so you can check out who's buried in your area. Sometimes there's even a photo of the grave.
Virtual Guidebooks
Travel around the western United States and Canada at this incredible site featuring over 2600 virtual reality panoramas of everything form painted rock petroglyphs in Arizona to glaciers in Alaska. You can look in any direction, as well as up and down, and zoom in and out. You can also browse the site thematically or geographically.
Top
News and Information
Time for Kids
This site from Time magazine for students in grades 3-8 features daily news stories. You will also find poll questions, reports from kids, interactive games, and a Web directory of sites for students in science, social studies, math, language arts, and the arts. You can also search the news archive for stories going back as far as 1998.
Newslink
This site from the American Journalism Review provides one-stop shopping for newspapers across the country and around the world. You'll also find links to TV and radio stations and magazines.
Top
Primary Sources
American Memory Collection from the National Digital Library
Wide collection of online exhibits on American history including images, sound recordings, movies, maps, and documents from the Library of Congress.
The National Gallery of Art
Images and information for the 100,000 works in the permanent collection. You can search the collection by artist, title, or subject.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
This is one of the best museum sites on the web. You can view over 3,500 works from the museum's permanent collection. Each work is accompanied by a description and you can enlarge the image for a closer view. Be sure to check out the Timeline of Art History , a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.
Avalon Project
This site from Yale contains documents in law, history, and diplomacy.
New York Public Library Digital Library Collection
Huge collection of images.
Online Books
Searchable directory of books online from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ad Access
Collection of ads from 1911-1955.
A-Z Interviews
Large collection of interviews with 20th century artists, politicians, writers, musicians, scientists, filmmakers, actors, and other figures.
Top
Language Arts
Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site- http://www.carolhurst.com/index.html
Reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics.
CyberGuides - http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/cyberguide.html
CyberGuides are supplementary, web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature from the San Diego County Office of Education. They are designed for the classroom with one online computer. Activity: Find a cyberguide for a book you are currently using in your curriculum.
Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature - http://www.dawcl.com/
Create a list of award-winning books to meet your specifications.
The Doucette Index to K-12 Teaching Ideas for Literature
http://www.educ.ucalgary.ca/litindex/
Searchable index to books and websites with teaching suggestions and ideas. Activity: Do a search for resources for a book you are currently using in your curriculum.
Book a Minute
www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute
For when even the condensed version is too long!
Video/Audio
BBC Motion Gallery
The BBC has put clips of over 300,000 hours of video footage on the web. You can view the footage and also downloads it.
Google Video
You'll find free and fee video here.
Internet Archive
You'll find a collection of open source movies and advertising, educational, and industrial films at this site.
Lost Remote
This blog track media news and includes a section on Online TV.
MASSIVE Radio
All science and math songs, all the time from DJ Greg Crowther, biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Cool!
MIT World
Online videos of lectures from MIT
Princeton University WebMedia
Online lectures.
Media Site
Search site for lectures.
Merlot
Online repository of learning objects.
Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley >> : Conversations with History
Video interviews.
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
Free online courses.
Music/Movies
AZLyrics
Find the lyrics to your favorite songs.
Internet Movie Database
This site has a wealth of information on movies and who worked on them.
Misc.
Family Search
See if you can find your ancestors!
Surname Distribution
See how your surname moved across the US from 1850-1990.
|
