Webquest Course: Search Like a Champ!

Search Like a Champ!
Finding The Best Web Sites

Question | Tasks | Background Information | Resources | Activity | Revisit the Question

Would you use that web page in your Webquest?

Web Search Strategies Activity
Brainstorm Questions
Get Creative with Key Words
Combining Key Words
Using great web sites to find other great web sites.

Background Information

Teacher and students have record access to web sites

In 1998, an estimated ten million (10,000,000) teachers and their students had daily access to the Internet (America Links Up, 1998) That number is always growing.
MSNBC reported, these teachers and students had access to explore over eight hundred million (800,000,000) web sites. (Boyle, 2000) Today, that number has grown to over one billion (1,000,000,000) websites.

Then, why is it that we can never find what we want to?

When I first started using the Internet, I often had a difficult time finding just the right site. Today, five years later, I've spent a lot of time searching for web sites and I have gotten pretty good at it. Let me review that point, you will become great at searching the Internet but it will take time and practice.

I will review three methods that I use to get you moving in the right direction.

Know what you are looking for!
Get Creative with your Key Words
Combining Key words in a Search Engine
Using great web sites to find other great web sites.

Searching For Great Sites Resources

Teacher Search Engines and Search Directories

iwebquest.com Find great webquests and hotlists.
BlueWeb'n This is My Favorite Starting point. Beware that it is very narrow but if you can find it you'll be happy!
Tony Brewer.com Tony Brewer has pulled together an amazing array of web sites for teachers and students.
Kathy Schrock's Educator's Guide Excellent search directory. Kathy is right on with her web pages!
Eduhound A good collection of sites for teachers and students.
Ed Helper Good sites organized by theme.
Thinkquest This site rovides learning resources for students on a wide range of educational topics.
KNE Search Page Great starting point
About.com The Elementary Search Section is a great search engine and directory rolled up into one.

Student Search Engines and Search Directories

Kids Click A great search engine for kids!
Yahooligans A great starting point for kids to search the internet and find kid safe sites.
About.com (Kids) Kids will love and learn from the sites they find here.
TechTrekers.com Debra Rollins is a retired teacher who has collected some great sites for teachers and students.
Ask Jeeves for Kids! Kids can use normal search language to find a great site.

Search Engines and Directories

Google.com A Great Site!
Yahoo.com A good search engine
AltaVista.com A huge, huge search engine

Meta Search Engines

Mamma.com The Mother of all search Engines
Ask Jeeves.com Have a Question? Jeeves will bring you the answer?

Webquest Resources

iwebquest.com
Webquest Search Page
Best Webquests
Building Blocks Of A Webquest (good way to see the differnet sections of a webquest)
Kathy Schrock'sWebQuest Archives
Macomb School's Webquests
San Diego Public School's Webquests
Memphis City Schools teachers
Spartansburg County Webquests (South Carolina)
Macomb (Michigan) Webquests
TechTrekers Webquests
Stonewall Elementary Webquests (Lexington, Kentucky)
New Mexico State Student WebQuests
Louisiana State University
Manteno School District's WebQuest
West Bend Webquest Resource List
WebWeaver Products 1999
Indiana University Teacher Education
University of Nevada - Las Vegas
Dr. Alice Christie's Matrix of 340 WebQuests
Locating and Evaluating WebQuests
WebQuests created by eMINTS teachers
Webquests from Dedham, MA
Elementary School Web-based Projects
Naturescapes
SESD WebQuests from Saskatoon (East) School Division
Warrensburg Schools WebQuest Academy
Eduscapes (search by grade-level)
WebQuests by Brebru.com
WebQuest Collection from Ecole Whitehorse Elementary

How To's for Search Engines and Search Directories

The Big 6 (pdf) Good Search Strategies
Search Organizer (pdf) Organize your thoughts before searching
Research Organizer (pdf) Take notes to answer your essential question
Seven Steps to Better Searching Great search ideas
Four NETS for Better Searching Great ideas that will help you search better
Basic Internet Searching Explore basic Internet search strategies with this interactive web site.
The 10 Stages of Working the Web for Education Good steps to better searching.
Working the Web For Education Theory and Practice on Integrating the Web for Learning
Link Like You Mean It! Selecting Web Sites to Support Intentional Learning Outcomes
Graphically Organizing the "Big6" Great strategy to rganize your thoughts before searching
Navigating Web Sites A great tutorial on web searching basics.
What's on The Web? Great resource for teachers

Wouldn't you Rather Gather? Skip search engines and find sites faster
Web Search 101 An introduction to the basics of effective Web searching, with tips on how to become a power searcher.
Power Search Techniques Boolean and Field Searching
Ten Essential Searching Tips Consummate advice for mastering search engines and becoming an expert Web searcher.
Seven Stupid Searching Mistakes Common blunders that are virtually guaranteed to deliver useless, nonsensical, and completely worthless search results.
Making Safe Choices Teach your kids the basics of Internet safety.
Choosing Great Sites Teach your kids to evaluate web sites.
Advertising on the Internet and Kids Teach your kds to avoid advertisers tactics.
Evaluating Web Sites Great resources to learn how to teach your students to pick the best sites.

Activity

Know what you are looking for!

Remember, all search engines search for key words on a page. If I type "Bird" in the box and press search it goes out to the Internet and searches for all the pages that have the word, "Bird" in it. It could find web pages for bird lovers, birdbrains, Uncle Bird's Chinese Food, the movie "Birdhouse"....

Therefore, it is important to have a clear narrow idea of what you want to find before you begin you search.

First, I recommend developing a focused essential question.

Focused:
What did the people of Ancient Egypt Eat?

Not Focused:
What was daily life like for an ancient Egyptian?

Second, brainstorm a list of 10 sub-questions.

Third, circle possible key words.

Assignment A: Please develop a question, 10 sub-questions, and circle possible key words for your Topic.


Get Creative with your Key Words

Write down your research question.

Write down your key words (remember to always use the singular form of a word (example: word not words))

Brainstorm synonyms for your key words.

Assignment B: Fill out the "Getting Creative with Key Words Organizer".

Combining Key words in a Search Engine

We will begin by using a search engine, Google.com, to begin our search. Type in your first key word, in my case it is Ancient Egypt and press search. Note, the number of sites that you found.

Put in your most important key word first.

Experiment by combining other key words and their synonyms.

Remember to use "   "* to keep phrases together.

Read the description of the website before checking it out further.
* "   "
To narrow down your search even more, use quotation marks around words that you would like to stay together in a phrase. For example, "Ancient Egypt" AND food.Use quotes to denote phrases. Phrases restrict results to EXACT matches; if combining terms is a natural marriage, narrows and targets results by many times. In this case, Ancient Egypt will find all pages with Ancient or Egypt on it, so I may find sites on modern Egyptian food or Ancient Japanese food... If I use, "Ancient Egypt" and food, I will only find Ancient Egyptian food.

Assignment B: Try this using your own key words.

.

Using great web sites to find other great web sites.

Once you have found a site that you really like and is very helpful to you, look for other links that you can go to. If you like the website, it will probably lead you to other great websites.

Check out the hotlists on these webquests that teachers have found to be great web sites.

Assignment C: Go to a webquest that is on your topic. Follow the links from their Hotlist to see if you can find anymore good web sites.

Now, go for it and find some great web sites to add links to your webquest. This is just a start, you will have plenty of time to do a more complete search later.

Revisit the Question

Would you use that web page in your Webquest?

Course Home Page

Question | Background Information | Webquest Resources | Activity | Revisit the Question

Created: March 20, 2001
Updated: June 11, 2006

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