A Few Details Before We Start It would be to your advantage to have an internet

browser open so you can try some exercises yourself.

If you are early you could try an Information Literacy Quiz @http://novemberlearning.com/resources/information-lit

eracy-resources/i-information-literacy-quiz/

How much do you know about information literacy? Take the following quiz to see if you are Somewhat Savvy (0-5 points), Moderately Savvy (6-10 points) or Downright Nerdy (10+ points)

Answer key to the Information Literacy Quiz

Finally I would like to credit Alan November for the skills and content presented.

© November Learning, Inc. [2006] http://www.novemberlearning.com

To help frame our thinking. Consider:How much control or filtering should our

schools exert over access to the internet and other social media and informational digital tools?

Or, what can we do (if anything) to prepare our students to use these extensive resources properly?

Things are changing so fast in a digital world. Is this worth our efforts to educate our students?

Web Literacy - The Library Skills of the 21st Century

v.3.1

• Verifying Information

&

• Locating Information

Topics for today:

Web LiteracyEvaluate A WebsiteWhat is a web address: Basic

OverviewMartin Luther King. OrgEasywhois.comArchive.org

Is there a role for Libraries today?

Verifying Information

…

Locating Information What is a search engine?

Data Base - info collected by robots & spiders. Directory - created by humans - Yahoo

Language of Searching- Key Words - Boolean Operators

Alternatives - Search Engines with different purposes.

Explanation Let’s try it out. Pick a subject - any subject

Power of Google A closer look.

The Invisible Web What is it? How to search it.

A Question to Start …

Does a library have a place in a DE / DL world?YesNo

If so: …What role do you see

a library (or whatever form that would take) play?

How does it work?Does it serve a

similar (or completely different) function to that of a school library?

A Question … continued.

What skills would be necessary for us to know and for us to teach our students?

… our purpose today!

A Scenario:

Grade 5 Research Assignment …

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Web Literacy - Overview

Defined as the Library Skills needed to successfully find accurate information on the Internet.

Without these skills, you won’t understand how the Internet - and information on the internet - is organized and who controls it.

…

… Web Literacy - Overview 2

Reading (and critical thinking about your reading) is decoding information in whatever media you are in.

This media - the Internet - is dynamic. It is forever changing.

What did you think of the Tree Octopus site? What do you think a young student would think of it?

zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Great looking site. How do you know it is accurate?

Where there other sources / sites?Check out: *

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_octopus_endangered

Google search the main part of the address:http://zapatopi.net/

What do you get? Does this sound reliable?What does the site description suggest to you?Look at the information Google can show you about

this site.

Other Web Sites to Validate A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism:

http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html Appropriate for use in middle/high school, this site is written by an engineering prof at

Northwestern University. It presents a version of the truth and is a clear example of why our kids need to think critically about information on the Internet.

All about explorers: http://www.allaboutexplorers.com If you teach anything about exploration, this site is a must. It's smart, slick and cleverly

done, plus has a host of great activities. California's Velcro Crop under Challenge http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html

Did you know about the Velcro shortage in California? Use this fun site to help students separate fact from fiction on the web.

Dihydrogen Monoxide www.dhmo.org Who knew water could be so hazardous. A good site to use with middle school students.

Have them click through the forward links on the site. Does the web site reference any other authors?

Dog Island Free Forever www.thedogisland.com A puppy dog paradise. Great site for all ages.

Feline reactions to bearded men http://improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html

…

© November Learning [2006] www.novemberlearing.com

… Other Web Sites to Validate - 2

Martin Luther King www.martinlutherking.org This seemingly innocent web site address calls for the abolition of Martin Luther King Day

and promotes White Pride. Content is inappropriate for all ages. Storm Front: www.stormfront.org

The publishers of this site also host the Martin Luther King site. It may be blocked by an Internet filter.

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html Does the Octopus really exist? A great site to use with all ages. Have students click through

the links and read web addresses carefully. Victorian Robots www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html

A great site to use with all ages. It has even stumped historians. Have students truncate the web address so they are just left with the domain name, www.bigredhair.com. This will give them some insight into the validity of this site.

Taken from:

http://www.novemberlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=159&type=art&site=179&parentid=56

© November Learning [2006] www.novemberlearing.com

Which of the following web sites is real? http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html http://www.firstgenetics.com/ http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/index.php http://www.golfcross.com/ http://www.buydehydratedwater.com/ http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html http://www.thedogisland.com/ http://www.bandersnatch.com/guide.htm http://www.wwwdotcom.com/ http://www.stephenswork.com/funkyshoes/index.html http://descy.50megs.com/NewHartford/newhtfd.html http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

The Controversy that is Wikipedia:

A reference source that can be edited by anyone! How can that possibly work?

How do Wikipedia and other wiki sites work?

Paradigm shift:Going from being written by experts to being

edited by a group of knowledgeable people.Encourages multiple points of view.

Understanding Web Addresses - The Basics

http://www.k12connect.ca/~n_kaspar/The DomainThe Extension Indicators of a personal page

The presence of a name in the URL such as jdoe and a tilde ~ or % or the word users or people or members frequently means you are on a personal web site.

Check out:http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html

What are the clues in this address that can help you decide if it is a credible web site?

Anatomy of a Web Address

© November Learning, Inc. [2006] www.novemberlearning.com

Some Common Extensions …

.edu = Educational organization (most US universities) .k12 = US school site (not all US schools use this) .ac = Academic institution (outside of US) .sch = School site (some schools outside of the US use this) .com = Company (usually .co in the UK) .org = Any organization .gov = Government agency .net = Network

.mil = Military institution .biz = Commercial .name = Commercial .pro = Commercial .info = Commercial

Country Codes (a few examples) .uk United Kingdom .ca Canada .za South Africa

A complete list of all URL extensions can be found @

http://www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/noframes/nf.domains.html

www.martinlutherking.org

How do you find out who is the author of this “book” (read Internet Site)?

Google Search it - a logical first stepSearch for “Martin Luther King”A way of looking up information in this library.Why would Google list this site as number 3 of

27800000 sites?What does the description in Google say?What are sites similar to this site about?

www.martinlutherking.org 2

Now do the search again, but with a slight variation.Search “martinlutherking.org” (do not include the

quotation marks.)Check out the “extra” information Google can show you

about this site.Links in and out of this site.Check out a bit of history with a look at the cached site.Check out sites the are similar to this site or contain the

term “martinlutherking.org”

Martinlutherking.org

How can we dig deeper?

Easy Who Is .com

A site that identifies who the author is. Information that is not necessarily on the web site.

www.easywhois.com

What Information can we find here and can we do with it?

Let’s Check out:martinlutherking.orgwww.discoverychannel.cawww.novemberlearning.com

Try one of your own web sites.

The Internet is Dynamic - How can we look at the history of a web site?

http://archive.org

A record of how a web site has changed over time.

http://archive.org

A site that lets you look at how other sites appeared in the past. Has several uses:Just a history of the site. What is used to look

like -who it was aimed at.A time capsule.How a resource has been refined over time.

http://archive.org

Check out:http://bccampus.cahttp://www.myway.comhttp://martinlutherking.orghttp://www.des.prn.bc.ca

A site of your choice.

This is whatmartinlutherking.orglooked like onNovember 22, 1999

(It is hard to see but noticethe link to Storm Frontat the bottom of the page.)

Now that we have looked at how to verify information

found on the Internet, let’s look at how to better find

relevant, current and appropriate information on the

Internet

Basic Search Approach

Internet Search Tips:Focus:

What are you looking for exactly

Strategies:Sources & Boolean Strategies = Results

Evaluate:Know that your information is credible

What is a Search Engine?They are a data base of

collected informationTwo main kinds:

General - Google Specific - Technorati

Information is collected in two ways: By computers using

robots and spidersEg: Google

By humans who evaluate the source before entering it into the data base. Eg: Yahoo

The Language of Searching …Keywords

Words or phrases that help you find the information you want.It is a real skill to learn how to choose good key words.

Boolean OperatorsCombining keywords effectively

“And” “Or” “Not”

Punctuation - “keywords”A few resources to look at:

Effective Keyword Searcheshttp://www.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/tutorials/search/inde

x.aspBoolean Logic Primer

http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html

Alternatives - Search Engines with Different Purposes

General Search Engines Variables depend on the

content of their data baseEg: Google / Yahoo /

Altavista / Meta Search Engines

Search the search enginesDogpile

Audience / Type / Subject Specific Search Engines Audience

Ask Jeeves KidsYahooligansKidsClick

TypeTechnorati

• Search for BlogsPodscope

• Search for Podcasts

SubjectKathy Schrok’s Guide

for Educators

A Look at Some Examples …

Noodletools (A site that teaches about how to search.http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/

Ask.comhttp://www.ask.com/

Surfwaxhttp://www.surfwax.com

KidSitehttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/

Let’s Try It Out …

Pick a subject - any subjectPick three to five keywords for that subjectEnter those keywords in exactly the same

way in each of these search engineshttp://www.google.comhttp://www.ask.com/http://www.yahoo.comhttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/http://www.dogpile.com/

Compare the first screen results for each one.

Google Bombing - An Aside

Why is one search engine not reliable enough?How can martinlutherking.org appear at the #3

position on a Google Search?Is it possible to buy your way up the Google (or

other search engines) ‘hit list’?

Miserable Failure = George BushTheatre Company - An example

A Look at One Specific Search Engine

The Power of Google

Some useless facts about Google:

Google has now become a word in the English language. “I googled it.”

What does Google stand for? "We were thinking about very large numbers ... so we came up with the term "googol" which is the

mathematical term for 10 to the hundredth (power). The correct spelling was g-o-o-g-o-l and I'm not sure that we realized that we had made a spelling error. But that was taken, anyway. There was this guy who'd already registered Googol.com, and I tried to buy it from him, but he was fond of it. So we went with Google.”

BING – Because it is not Google???Depending of your definition of the WWW,

Google searches anywhere between 2% to 70% of it.

Web 2.0 – the Social Web

The web has evolved a long way past being simply a source of information. With the social web now in full swing, it is useful to be able to search and validate information there as well.

As an experiment, try Googling your own name.What comes up?

Search Options Specific to GoogleGoogle & Firefox

PrefetchingAdvanced Search Template

Advanced Search OperatorsBoolean WordsPunctuationSpecific Commands

• Domain Search• Cache Search• Link Search• Number Range Search• Definition command

Google Advanced Search

Click on type:LinkPictureVideoNews

Then Click on Advanced Search.Note differences.

Going even further …

Google Operators: Google has include many different operators that you can put in a search string to help you find the information you are looking for.EG: Entering “Time Berlin” gives the current

time in Berlin Germany.

Many of them are listed and explained here:http://www.googleguide.com/

advanced_operators.html

Site:

One of the most powerful is the site: operator. It allows you to limit your search to certain sites.

Research problem: You are researching the American Revolution and you want an opposing point of view. How would you find out the opinions the

English had on the American Revolution?…

In Google enter: site:uk “American Revolution”

Try it yourself:

Find information on World War 2 that reflects an Italian point of view.

Or choose another topic of interest.What did you get?

Shortened URL’s

http://Bit.ly http://notlong.com/links/http://tiny.cc/

There are many more.

The Invisible Web

What is it?All other parts of the web that are not an html pages.

Includes: data bases / spreadsheets / flash files / dynamically generated web pages / pdf’s / pictures / sounds / movies / journals / news articles / …

How to search it?Learn about it and find a source that is specific to

finding the information you want.http://www.robertlackie.com/invisible/index.html

Thank you for taking the time to attend this session!

… questions or comments?

Norbert Kaspar

nkaspar@prn.bc.ca

(250) 261-2997

Resources on Web Literacy

http://novemberlearning.com/This is where most of our information came from.

A shameless plug – There are a couple of course offered through Alan November’s organization that is well worth taking. They are called - Teaching Zack to Think / Web Literacy for Educators

Answer key to the Information Literacy Quiz

If you would like a copy of this PowerPoint, please contact Norbert Kaspar