wondersay #2

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

wonder say one

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

In College Research we learned more about keywords and the importance of their placing. I thought that despite how you place the words, the search engines still search the same words. Instead, the first word you put in the search box is considered the most important  and websites that contain that keyword will be at the top of the search results. If the placing of the keywords were reversed, the new first keyword would be considered the priority when searching for results. Since the search engines have different algorithms that search with different standards, the placing of keywords may not be as important in some search engines, but it is still important to keep in mind that it might. 

why do search engine results vary with different search engines?

wordle 2

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

Today we learned about google's wonder wheel. When researching a topic, it is important to know about the topic so the search can be detailed and in depth, but sometimes, this is not the case. Although this usually meant researching the topic will become a complicated process, today I learned about a new tool that will help. When using the wonder wheel, google makes subcategories for you that narrows down the results. Within each subcategory is more subcategories bringing results that can be in the millions, down to the thousands, hundreds, and even less as you get deeper into the sub categories. 

college research three

college research two

What did you already know of the material pesented in the lesson?

In class we have learned about researching and how what is put in the search box greatly effects the outcome. First of all, there are such things as stop words. These are pronouns, verbs, conjuctions, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and articles. Ofcourse, through years of experience, I learned that certain words aren't necessary when researching and that a specific phrase brings better results then a sentence, but I didn't know just how many kinds of words should be left out. I also figured if you rephrase something it could bring different and possibly even more results but I never thought about using synonyms nevertheless a thesaurus to help me gather information more effectively.

college research

7 steps to creating an effective research strategy

What did you learn from reading someone else's blog? Did it help you write your own blog entry?

Reading Danielle's blog I was reminded why some content is only accessable in the invisible web. There are a few reasons why certain information is only available in the invisible web and not in search engines but she named four. One was because the pages require a password to be entered in order to reach the information.  Another reason is because the content is too deep in the web for a search engine to get to it. Third, the presence of a root file asked the search engine not to index the content. Last but not least, some information is only available in the invisible web because the search engine doesn't have the technology necessary to index  the non-html content. This helped me narrow down the main reasons some information can't be accessed as easily as others and clarified the difference in the content provided by search engines and the content stored in the invisible web.

How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this class helping you with research in your other classes?

The information that I have learned from College Research is very useful nonetheless applicable in my other classes. Just about every class, from government to calculus, involves the internet and some sort of researching. College Research equips us with the knowledge applicable to any research projects. Creating search indexes, learning about different databases and learning about different search engines allows me to do more efficient researching. In this class we also learned site:commands which help us narrow down our search to find exactly what we are looking for more easily. Learning about extensions, URL's, links and website owners also helps us verify the information that we have used making sure that all of our work for every class is accurate.

What questions do you still have?

I still have questions with forward and back links. I sometimes get confused with the difference and the commands used to find them. Memorization is hard for me so remembering the steps necessary to get to the links and figure out their legitimacy can be difficult. I also wonder if their are any extensions other then the one's we have learned and if there are what do they stand for.

What would you like to know more about the material?

I would like to learn more about fake websites. I've realized that quite a few websites that seem legit are actually not. People put a lot of effort into making a website seem accurate yet the facts are false. By creating numerous sites and linking to them, the owner of the website makes it seem like they have many references to support their theories meanwhile the other pages are usually more lies. By learning more about fake websites I would be able to assure that all the research I have done is true instead of second guessing it's accuracy. 

What did you understand most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?

Today, we continued to learn how to do research effectively. Completing the worksheet, "A Guide To Smart Searching," we practiced what we would type in the search engine for different possible topic of interest. The codes for the places we wanted to learn about were pretty easy to understand. We just had to write them first then follow it by the topic. Extensions were a little confusing because they differ. For example, sch, k12 and edu are all for educational purposes but they differ depending on the grade level and where it is. ALso when searching the region, you do not have to put us. unless you have the specific region in the U.S. which i did not know.

What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?

Today, I learned how to narrow down research. By writing "site:" followed by the specific extension, a plus sign and the topic your researching in the search engine, theresults are narrowed down to exactly what you are looking for. The search would look as follows, "site:extension + topic". I did not know of the shortcuts that can help for more efficient and successful researching. Therefore, the whole lesson today was new to me. Also, when looking in a specific country or region, you would type the region code after the extension as it would show up in the url and the information from that region would apppear. Another thing I learned is that when the topic is more then one word, they are surrounded by quotations so that the search engine is aware that they are to be put together as a phrase.

What did you already know of the material presented in the lesson ?

From the blogging and blog accounts that we have learned about, I already knew that people could make a blog but I didn't think just anybody could. I thought certain people of authority, such as teachers, scientists, etc. were the only ones who could make blogs. I also knew that in order to blog you need an account but I thought that blogging websites were for people that belonged to an organization of some sort. The ability to comment on blogs was something that I was familiar with aswell due to the fact that in some classes that I have taken commenting on blogs was essential.

Guiding Questions

• What did you already know of the material pesented in the lesson?
• What did you learn? What material was new to you? What were the three most important things you've learned in today's lesson/independent practice?
• What did you understand most/least about today's lesson/independent practice?
• What would you like to know more about the material?
• What questions do you still have?
• How is the information you learned applicable to your other class assignments? How is this  class helping you with research in your other classes?
• What did you learn from reading someone else's blog? Did it help you write your own blog entry?
• If there was a reading assignment, What did you learn from the reading assignment? What did you not understand? What prior knowledge did you bring to the reading material?
• Did you have a need for information today? If so, how did you go about finding it?