Finding Information - Google Advanced Search
What do you think of when you hear the word "internet?" Some people think of it as a place to find information. Others think of it as a place to meet friends and make new friends. Others think of the internet as a way to watch videos. Others use the internet to buy things. The internet is all these things, and more!
The simplest description of the internet is that it is a giant group of computers that at all connected to one another. The information contained on each computer can be shared with all of the other computers that are connected to it.
How big and busy is the internet? Click!
Like everything else, there is both good and bad associated with the internet. On the good side, the availability of so much free information has made it much easier to do research for school. Everyone has access to most of the information that used to be available only in university libraries. On the other side of the research coin, a lot of the information that you might find is simply not true. The internet is open to anyone and everyone. There is, for example, nothing to stop me from creating a website the offers "proof" that drinking tap water causes insanity. Someone doing research on tap water or on insanity might find that website, believe the information contained on it, and include it in their research paper.
Part One - Google Advanced Search
Because the main educational purpose for using the internet is conducting research, our first lesson will be all about using search engines. Google is not the only way to search the internet, but since most of you are already familiar with Google, it's the method we are going to examine.
Just about everyone knows how to use Google Search. You just type what you're looking for in the search box and Google will find millions and millions of pages about the topic you have entered. There are several problems with this method. First, there are just too many pages to check for the information you need. Second, many of the pages will not actually contain information about the subject you are interested. Third, some of the pages will not contain information from reliable sources.
Thankfully, Google offers something called Advanced Search. Once you have learned how to use Advanced Search effectively, you will be able to zero in on just the web pages that actually relate to the subject you are researching. Let's get started!
I have included a link for Google Advanced Search right in the menu on my website, but for this lesson, use the link below. The link will open a Google Advanced Search window in a new tab. You will be able to switch back and forth between the Advanced Search tab and this lesson.
Click here for Google Advanced Search
You can see that the Advanced Search page offers many different options that you can use when performing your search.
The first search box will work by finding websites that contain all of the words that you type into the search box. Google will not care, though, what order those words are found in on the page. As an example, entering the words hale, charter, and academy will return all web pages that include those words. That means that Google would register a "hit" for a page that contained this:
"Ralph Hale was chosen to star in the new Disney movie, Kim Kardashian Meets Dumbo. Many expect Mr. Hale to receive an Academy Award for his portrayal of Justin Bieber in the Disney fantasy. The movie will open over the Thanksgiving weekend. You can see trailers now if you are a Charter Cable customer."
Obviously, this website would not be useful for someone who was trying to get information about our school. Now, let's have a look at the second search box on the Advanced Search page.
The second box is used when you want to find websites that contain your exact search term. This time, we put hale charter academy into the second box. When Google performs the search, it will only return websites that contain those three words in the exact order we entered them.
We'll skip the third box for now and move to the fourth. In this box, you can enter a word that you want Google to look for and, if it finds the word on the website, you don't want Google to return that site as a "hit." Let's try one out. Let's make believe that you are doing a research project about the development of video games. One of the video games you want to get information about is Donkey Kong. Let's see how we can use Google Advanced Search to get reliable information.
First, enter donkey kong in the second search box and click on Search. You should notice that one of the first few "hits" returned is a Wikipedia article. Go back to your search page, leave donkey kong in the second box, but type nintendo in the fourth box. Click on Search again. Do you see what's changed? The Wikipedia articles are gone. They are gone because they include the word Nintendo.
When doing research, you might end up finding pages that are written in a language that you do not understand. There is no sense cluttering up your screen! Luckily, Adanced Search lets you find pages that are in a specific language. Go back to your search screen, and choose a language other than English. When I was testing this out, I used German, but you can pick any language you like. Remember, we still have donkey kong in the second box and nintendo in the fourth. Then choose a language and click on Search. What language did you choose? How many pages did Google find?
Okay, it's time to get really fancy now. Remember how I told you that some websites contain unreliable information because anyone can say anything they want on the internet? Well, this time, we're going to limit our search for donkey kong information to websites that are owned by colleges and universities. That's not a guarantee that all of the websites you find are reliable, but it will definitely cut down on the junk. On your Advanced Search screen, leave donkey kong in the second box, leave nintendo in the fourth box, change the language back to "any", and then go to the box labelled "site or domain." In the site or domain box, type a dot followed by edu (.edu). Most websites end in .com (which means commercial), but college and university websites typically end in .edu. Then, click on Search. Did Google find any websites? How many?
Okay... here comes the last Advanced Search tip for this lesson. Go back to your Advanced Search page. Leave donkey kong in the second box and leave nintendo in the fourth box. Erase .edu from the site or domain box. Find the file type box and click on the arrow that you see on the right hand side of the box. Choose PowerPoint as the file type and click Search. Wow! Can you believe how many PowerPoint presentations there are about Donkey Kong? These people obviously had too much free time!
You can actually use the "regular" Google search screen to perform these same advanced searches if you learn the "operators" to use. At the bottom of this lesson is a link to all of these search tips and more, including a few fun things you can do with Google. Have a look at it on your own time.
Remember that the reason we have been going through this exercise is to find information for an imaginary research project about the development of video games. All research projects require a formal bibliography. When I was in school, and when your parents were in school, creating a bibliography was a long, tiresome, and error-prone process. Now, thought, there are websites that make the bibliography for you. Let's have a look at one of those websites -- EasyBib.
Open a new tab in your browser and go to www.easybib.com. Now, go back to your Advanced Search tab. Leave donkey kong in the second box, leave nintendo in the fourth box, put .edu in the site or domain box, change the language to English, and change the file type to any format. Then search.
Choose one of the hits and click on it. Then, copy the entire website address (the URL) from the address bar by highlighting it and then pressing the control (CTRL) and the "C" key at the same time. Then, switch to your EasyBib tab.
On the Easybib screen, put your cursor into the "Cite Source" box. Hold down the control key and press the "V" key at the same time. This will paste the address of the website you chose into the Cite Source box in Easybib. Then, click on "Cite It."
EasyBib will show you the information that it found. Click on "Continue."
On the next page, EasyBib shows you all of the information that it was able to obtain directly from the website. Some of the boxes might be blank. If you know the information that belongs in the empty boxes, this is the time to add it. When you are done, click on "Create Citation."
Easybib will place your citation into a grey box From here, you can copy it and then paste it into a Word or Google Drive document. We'll do that next time.
That's the end of this lesson. You should try some of this at home so that you become an expert. You are going to need to know how to do this for your first semester and second semester research projects! Here is the link that I promised: