Search+Learning+Activities

= **WWW Search Strategies -** **Learning Activities** =


 * 1. What four major search engines can you think of? **Google, Yahoo, AltaVista & Boolify

1a: Try a few tools you've never heard of and list these and your impressions of them.

Excite I suppose it was ok as a search engine. I did not like the "feel" of the layout. It was far too busy looking before I even got to searching. Even after searching "iPads in Education" it took me a little while to figure out that the several top results were sponsored search results not real ones. It had similar features to Google in that if you signed up you could customise the search page, although I'm not sure how much customisation is possible because I wasn't willing to sign up. It lacked a clear crispness to the homepage with the advertising right there and in your face it was rather off putting.

SearchHippo I really liked the simplicity of this search engines home page. Clear, crisp and simple layout with no advertisements in your face made it attractive from the start. I used the same search term as the previous search engine I explored, "iPads in Education" and when the results came up that's when I saw the big difference. Unlike Excite which threw up websites that explored the topic searched, SearchHippo only returned sites that had the word Education in them. A little disappointing after such a fantastic looking site had me almost sold at the start.

Factbites Again the initial layout was fairly clear and crisp, however when I realised what I was looking at wasn't the whole page rather just the top half, and then I scrolled down further it was interesting that it had snippets of different topics and items displayed. I then typed in my search term "iPads in Education" only to receive this error message So this was greatly disappointing.


 * 2. Why might you use quotation marks when conducting a search? **

2a: Using Teoma search engine to search iPads in Education, first without the quotation marks and then with the quotation marks to notice the different in the number of results.

Without quotation marks - Number of Search Results 2 770 000 With the quotation marks - Number of Search Results 18 200

3a: Use a Boolean operator on your favourite search engine 3b: Using Boolify search - how successful has this strategy been for you?
 * 3. What is Boolean logic and how can it help me search better? **

When using Boolean logic to help me search better, I much prefer to use Boolify than use the terms in my favourite search engine Google. I think that is because I love the visual aspect of Boolify. I've been using Boolify for about three years now and I just love how it narrows down my searches for relevant information to my topic to a manageable size. Boolify rocks socks as my six year old would say.

4a: Go to www.easywhois.com and enter the URL of a site you wonder about
 * 4. Did you ever wonder who actually owned a particular website? **



5a. Please see the intended use of the following top level domains
 * 5. Generic top level domains are the ".com" part of a URL **

.aero - the air transport industry .asia - companies, organisations and individuals in the Asia-Pacific region .biz - business use .com - commercial organisations, but unrestricted .coop - cooperatives .edu - US post secondary educational establishments .gov - US government entities at the federal, state and local levels .info - informational sites, but unrestricted .jobs - employment related sites .k12 - school usually followed by state abbr. and US .mil - the US military .mobi - sites catering to mobile devices .museum - museums .name - families and individuals .net - originally for network infrastructures, now unrestricted .org - originally for organisations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs, now unrestricted .pro - certain professions .sch - reserved for schools .tel - services involving connections between the telephone network and the internet .travel - travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus etc


 * 6. How would you conduct a search for the following: a list of Web sites of all the academic institutions in South Africa? **

I used Boolify using the keywords list, academic, institutions, south africa and the Boolean Logic term AND and came up with this top result - which gave a me a list of the academic institutions and their websites. http://www.university-directory.eu/South-Africa/South-Africa.html#.T3bF9-2JJS8

6a Create your own search specific to a certain country and report the results

Again I used Boolify using the keywords iPads, education, Australia, research, primary, school to find Australian research on the use of iPads in Primary Schools. It came up with some great top results such as those below: @http://www.education.vic.gov.au/studentlearning/teachingresources/ict/research.htm http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/348795/catholic_schools_keen_ipad_education/#closeme learningwithipads.blogspot.com iPad s in Schools: Use Testing.

Dr Antonenko you led me astray a bit with this one. I followed the instruction to type host:edu+turtle but it didn't work for me but one of the results that popped up did suggest I try site:edu+turtle and viola! It worked. :)
 * 7. How would you conduct a search for the following: US higher education Web sites that contain the word turtle. **

7a: Create your own search specific to a certain top level domain and report the results I created my own search specific to iPads research in learning in Australia so I used the following site:edu.au + ipad + research + education

I got several great results showing me Australian research about iPads in Education using learning. Here's the top three. @http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/ipad-student-trial/ipad-research @http://www.learningexchange.nsw.edu.au/innovation---creativity/technologies-for-learning/ipads/ipads-in-learning.aspx @http://www.bond.edu.au/research/university-research-centres/centre-for-applied-research-in-learning-engagement-andragogy-and-pedagogy/pad-agogy/index.htm

**8. Have you ever used Google as a calculator?** I was aware that you could use the Google search tool as a calculator amongst many other things, I have never used it in this manner, so it was fun to try it out. 8a. Try out at least five of the features and report them for this activity I loved this one! As I am often up and already at Personal Training before sunrise so this function I will use often in the future so I can figure out whether I will need to take my sunglasses for the bike ride home or not! :)



Another one I thought was fantastic. As I travel a great deal this is a quick easy way to find out the temps and weather for the city I am travelling to! Looks like I'll be packing cool light clothing for my trip to Stillwater! :)

Now that I have explored the calculating feature, I thought it would be interesting to see what my total weight loss so far would look like in pounds. I think it looks better in pounds! :)



Love it, but I'm sure the Australian dollar could do a little better considering I'm flying to US real soon!! :)

Always good to check the available flights out to the US! This is my new favourite route to the US.

**9 & 10. Share with two different people two different search strategies or tools you've learned in this module.** I shared this experience with two different people, one being my husband Marc (an adult) and my son Broderick ( a 10 year old child). I did this because I wanted two uniquely different perspectives and conversations to reflect upon. I went through the same two different search strategies and tools I learnt during this module with both people. I was fascinated by weather search tool in Google and I also found the information about the generic top level domains really interesting, so it was these two aspects that I shared.

My husband like me knew that google could do some pretty cool searches such as these but hadn't really looked into it, and therefore he thought they were cool too, and we spent about 30 minutes going over all the google tools we could find and playing with them as we discussed their usefulness. Whether or not we will use them in the future is another thing. We then discussed the generic top level domains and what each abbreviation for each domain represented, with both myself and my husband commenting that we had never seen some of them, and how we had actually seen alternative ones. This was especially true for the .mobi GTLD. We noted that most sites that are now accessed on mobile devices start with the "http://m.whateverthesiteaddressis" rather than ending in .mobi - so we debated a little over this one.

My son on the other hand thought the Google tools were AWESOME! We spent about 45 minutes just going over each one in detail, talking about their purpose and how we could use them in real life situations. He loved playing with them online and then took time after our discussion to show his little sister how they worked. He was really taken by them. I discussed with him the generic top level domain abbreviations and his response was "yeah mum I already know about that because we learnt all about that at school", so apparently I am the only one that did not know all those.

**Bonus Activity:** I created my own personalised search engine using @http://www.google.com/cse/?hl=en - My personalised search engine can be found here