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Seeking: Accurate, truthful and relevant information to form useful arguments and positions
Seeking:Accurate, truthful and
relevant information to form useful arguments and
positions
Why do grocery stores put milk in the back of the
store?
Why are doggie treats often on lower shelves in a
grocery store?
Why do Staples stores have low shelves and hanging signs?
Why do books have indexes and tables of
contents, but newspapers don’t?
Organizing physical spaceSome things are closer than others
Physical objects can only be in one place at one time
Physical space is shared
Human physical abilities are limited
Shared physical spaces must be orderly and neat for people to find things
Organizing digital spaceEverything is only a few clicks away
Everything can be personalized
Supply is nearly infinite
Things can be classified in multiple ways at the same time
Information can be stored in random ways and organized instantly when needed
Example: Finding musicFrom buying albums to buying songs
From DJs to iPods
From browsing in a record store to find artists to listening to Pandora etc.
Unbundled InformationFrom newspapers to separate sites for news,
comics, weather, sports, crossword puzzles, food, classifieds, advertisements
From broadcast news programs to YouTube
From a handful of general interest magazines to millions of niche sites
The number of digital things is vastly greater than the number of physical things
We need new forms of organization, searching and
finding:Everything is miscellaneous
(book by David Weinberger)
A topic is just the beginning
1. Make a hypothesis or state an assumption about your topic:
We believe clean energy is the key to Nevada’s economic future
We believe that child abuse increases when the economy gets worse
We believe more people should use bicycles in Reno
2. Ask questionsWhat percentage of Nevada’s energy is currently
provided by alternative energy? How has that changed over the past 20 years?
What is the incidence of reported child abuse in Nevada? How do we compare to other countries? OR, how are children treated? OR, what happens to abusers?
3. Translate those questions into Web search language
A search query starts with the words most likely to appear on the page you’re looking for
Nevada child abuse records
Child abuse worldwide
Children testify abuse
TipsNouns are better than adjectives, verbs and
other parts of speech
Search engines ignore common words (the, it, she, etc.)
The more specific your term, the most specific the results
Keep revising to narrow or broaden your search until you have what you need
More advanced searchingPhrase search ("")
Search within a specific website (site:)
Terms you want to exclude (-)
Search engines: “There is no best”
Google (more than 72% of all searches: worth more than $150 billion)
Yahoo
Bing
Ask
AOL
(Phil Bradley’s Web site: Which search engine when?)
Keyword searchesGoogle is always a good bet, since it has the
largest index
Yahoo Search is the second most popular keyword search engine
Bing may provide results if the other two don't work
Directory based search engines
These search engines arrange data in hierarchies from broad to narrow. Good if you need an overview of a subject or you're not entirely sure of what you want.
Yahoo Directory provides 14 main categories
Google Directory provides access to 16 main categories
The Open Directory Project provides access to 16 main categories
Meta search engines These search engines are useful if you need to run a comprehensive search quickly
across a number of different engines, to compare results or to suggest search engines that you may not have tried before.
Browsys 18 search engine options. Formerly intelwaysFasteagle dozens of resourcesIxquick has a nunber of UK based engines in its collectionIzito 6+ standard free text search engines usedJoongel 10 engines in multiple categoriesKedrix GYMA search engineMamma been around for ever, good reputationNginer covers various types of search and engines. Framed resultsScour GYM search, + vote and comment on resultsSearch!o wide variety of different enginesSearchboth Compare 2 search engines at once, eight optionsSputtr has 9 different optionsSymbaloo visual and multi engine, add your own engines as well.Trovando is a first rate choice and a personal favourite. 33 optionsWhonu? Wide variety of resources, lots of options, impressiveZuula 11 different search engine options
The Deep WebSearch engines include far less than half of all
the information on the total Web. The Deep Web includes information in databases that is only displayed when specifically searched, and information that is intentionally kept private.
Also remember that the Web doesn’t include vast amounts of historical data, information in libraries, government centers and corporations that has never been digitized
Searching on GoogleMaps (food 89503)
Books (magazine archives)
Images (colors, shapes, faces)
Videos (Google owns YouTube)
Blogs
Scholarly work
Shopping
Google’s constant tweaking
New interface on left hand column
Enter location
Wonder Wheel
Google insights for searches
Search engine tipsEvery word matters.
Search is always case insensitive. A search for [ new york times ] is the same as a search for [ New York Times ].
Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters.
Sorting the answersFirst, look at the category of the listing: Is it
news, scholarly work, a commercial site, a non-profit or advocacy group?
Can often (not always) tell by the URL -- .edu,.com., gov., org., it., uk.
Choose the most credibleUse the credibility criteria we’ve talked about in
class: Who authored the site? For what purpose? When?
How does this source of information compare with the others you’ve found?
Look for the sites that others are referencing. Find the most authoritative sources.
Social bookmarking in Plain English
Use tags on DeliciousWhen you save a Web site to Delicious, write a
short description and be sure to use the “tag” feature to identify what the site is about.
Use the key words from your initial questions to help categorize the information
Today, meet in your groups to:
1. Focus your topic by stating a set of hypotheses or assumptions. Post it on your Ning group page.
2. Develop a list of questions to test your hypotheses/assumptions
3. Identify key words and categories for searching
4. Assign each group member a focus
For Wednesday1. Revise your group description as necessary:
“We want to find out…” OR “We believe…”
2. Post a link to your delicious account and be sure to have a minimum 50 sites saved and tagged (more for larger groups)
3. Include a mix of news sites, government sites, commercial sites (if appropriate), non profits, geographically diverse (if appropriate). Use tags to sort by category as well as topic.
If you do not have a groupWe will go through the groups one by one to
identify which ones are full (four is the ideal size; five if you must).
Please join a group that is focused on a topic that you’re interested in
Groups Teen pregnancy
Child abuse
Conspiracies
Medical marijuana (uses)
Children in Africa
Sex trafficking
Body image in media
Animal cruelty
Oppression in Tibet
Genocide and slavery
Obesity in America
The road unknown: biking
What is beauty UNR
Medical marijuana
Driving and texting (2)
Clean energy
Marijuana legalization
BCS ranking system
