Transparency of a page of hits returned from a search of the WWW
Overhead Projector
Printer
Time allotment: 30 minutes
Grade Level: Grade 3 and up
Information Literacy Standard:
2. The student who is information literate evaluates information critically
and competently.
Learning Outcomes
Students will be able to identify
the best hits/results by reading the title, description, and web address on
a Results page.
Students will
be able to defend their choice when asked why they chose the sites they chose.
Suggested Procedure
Students have developed a research question
and identified key words and synonyms to
help them search resources for answers to their research question. They have
begun to search the web for information. Students
now need to learn how to quickly scan the results
of a search to determine which hits/results will most likely provide the best
information.
Gather students into one central place (rug, center of the room) for a demonstration
of how to select the best web sites.
Teacher Demonstration
Demonstrate on
the computer how to bring up the search engine AltaVista(www.altavista.com)
Choose key words or a key phrase that students will not be using and
enter them into the box. Be sure and surround the key phrase with quotation
marks.
Demonstrate how to change the language from "any language" to "English"
and then press the search button.
Have a transparency prepared ahead of time that shows the hits (results)
for your key word or key phrase search
Place the transparency on the overhead and tell the students, "I received
10 hits/results on my key word search. Now I have to decide which of
these 10 hits/results will give me the best information."
In the interest of time and efficiency, it is important to read the information
for each hit/result instead of just clicking on any hit/result. Reading the
description of a hit/result will allow you to determine whether that particular
site will provide the information you are looking for.
Read the title of the hit/result to the class. Tell students that the title
will tell them what the site is about.
Next, read the description. Tell students that the description provides
them with further information about the site.
Finally read the web address in the description.
Tell students that the web address will provide them with information about
the type of organization providing the information, and the name of the organization.
Student Interaction
Have the students
read each web site title, description, and web address with you out loud.
As students are reading each web site, tell them to be ready to come
up with the three hits/results (out of 10) that they think will give
them the best information to answer their research question.
After reading all web sites, have students suggest which sites will
give them the best information and why they think this is so.
Elicit responses from several students.
Come to consensus as a group about which three sites will provide the best information
to answer the research question.
Next, click on the students' first choice, then their second choice, and
finally their third choice of web sites.
Ask students if they made good choices. If the answer is "yes," ask them
why these were good choices.
If the answer is "no," ask them why these were not good choices.
Continue this discussion until students see the value of reading web site
descriptions and the time it can save in searching for good information.
Student Online Work
When you, the
teacher, get a sense that the students know how to choose the best web
hits/results, assign students working on the same research question to
computers. Have students:
Open the search engine AltaVista (www.altavista.com)
let each group select a key word or key phrase and enter that key
word or key phrase into AltaVista.
select the language "English" and then click on "Search."
print out the page of web hits/results they received as a result of
their key word or key phrase search.
read the web site title, description, and web address from the print-out
and circle the three hits/results they think will give them the best
information to answer their research question.
Have each group show the teacher their three choices (the teacher should put
a check on each paper to denote it has been checked by the teacher). Have student
pairs:
go back to their computer and click on their three choices.
print off the first page of each choice.
indicate on each paper "good choice because it gave us good information,"
or "bad choice, because it did not give us good information."
put their names on all three pages and hand them in to the teacher along
with the original AltaVista web hit/result page.
Assessment
The teacher needs to check student web hit/result choices against the web
hit/result page to see if students, by the nature of the web title, description,
and web address, made good choice selections to help them answer their research
questions. This will provide information on how well the student is capable
of choosing the best web hits/results.
This page was
last updated January 9, 2002
This lesson was created to support the AT&T/UCLA Initiative
for the 21st Century Literacies.
Choosing the Best Hits was created by Sharon
Sutton.
