Using Internet Search Engines for Academic Research: Three Lessons for High School Students

The following three lessons are designed for high school students in order to teach the correct use of search engines. The lessons show how to choose keywords, distinguish credible sources from non-authoritative sources, and use resources ethically. The objective is to get students beyond the cursory Google search and into pages of relevant and authoritative search results.

Definitions:

Internet: A worldwide system of interconnected networks allowing for data transmission among millions of computers

Internet Search Engine: a computer program that indexes and retrieves documents or files from the internet according to queries from users

Query: a request made to an internet search engine

Keyword Search: A search for documents containing one or more words specified by a user in a search engine text box

Boolean Search: A search that uses the words AND, OR, and NOT along with keywords to focus a search.

Try these searches:

Assume you are doing a research paper on the topic of "blue whales."

1. Use Google. Type into the search box: facts about blue whales. Look at the top ten results.

2. Use Excite.com. Type into the search box: blue whales. Look at the top ten results. Next click on "advanced search" just above the search box. In the "exact phrase" box, type: blue whales. In the "none of these words" box, type: shop buy. In the language box, select English. Click the search button and compare the results with those you got earlier.

3. Use Bing.com. Type into the search box: blue whales. Look at the top ten results.

Notes on advanced search options

For most search engines, advanced search is a simplified way of doing a Boolean search. The Boolean operator AND narrows a search by requiring all key words to be present in the retrieved records. The Excite search engine does this via "all of these words" or "exact phrase" boxes. OR broadens a search, retrieving records with one, two, or all of the key words. Excite uses a box called "any of these words" to do the OR function. Use the OR operator if your topic has several synonyms. NOT excludes a word or words from the search, equivalent to the "none of these words" box on Excite.

More exercises

1. Go to excite.com and type in the search box: Elvis. Next, click on advanced search. What do you need to do if you want results to exclude Elvis impersonators and Elvis merchandise?

2. What keywords might be useful if you are planning a science fair project about trajectories of different bullets? About the vitamin C content of fruit juices? About the flammability of building materials?

Your teachers give you certain requirements about the resources you may use for projects and papers because not all resources are equal. Particularly on the internet, where anybody can get a website, the student must evaluate sources to be sure they either come from a reliable site or a reliable author.

Authoritative sites often end in ".edu" indicating the site belongs to a university or college, such as www.ncat.edu for North Carolina A&T State University. Sites ending in ".gov" indicate the site is maintained by a local or national government body such as www.irs.gov for the Internal Revenue Service. Sites ending in ".org" are often non-profit organizations which may be reliable sources so long as you take into account their agenda (environmentalist, religious, political, humanitarian, etc.) Sites ending in ".com" should be evaluated to see if the information on the site is consistent with information from print resources or known authoritative websites.

Exercises

Look at the following websites and decide if they could be authoritative sources, possibly reliable sources needing verification, or questionable sources. Discuss the viewpoints and possible biases of these websites:

www.ala.org

www.nationalenquirer.com

www.ncsu.edu

www.answersingenesis.org

www.atheists.org

www.aclu.org

www.noaa.gov

Using another person's words or original ideas as your own is stealing--no different than using their car or their bank account without permission. When using the exact words of another, enclose them in quotation marks and properly cite the source of the quote. Use footnotes or parenthetical notes to give proper credit for the ideas of others that you have incorporated into your own paper or project. Citations include the author, title, and publication information for your source and are intended to give enough information to enable a reader of your paper to find the source if they wish. For internet sources, the citation includes the website address and the date on which you accessed the information. Teachers and professors will tell you what style to use for citations. Most high schools teach the use of MLA style.

Exercises

Write correct MLA citations for the following, using your MLA documentation guide:

1. http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html

2. http://www.sbc.org/bfm/default.asp

3. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/aardvark/