ETL 501 - Search Engines

I started this course last year, but got overwhelmed by the workload and dropped back to one subject a semester, so I read all this information before I dropped the course.  Before that it was all fairly new to me though.  I do try to use Google Advanced when I’m searching, and I have used google books and google scholar when I’ve been researching essays.  I’ve never used Google news before though.

Having had a break from study, I know I slipped back into my slovenly research habits, relying on google to give me the answers to everything.  Occasionally I would use the advanced function.  I’ve now got all my bookmarks organized properly, and I’ve bookmarked a lot of things from this particular topic so I can find them again.  I have good intentions to be a more effective information searcher.

This week we had to try out different search engines, and see if it made a difference to our search results.  Sometimes looking for things online is like blundering around in the dark, you feel like the answers you want are there, but they are somehow out of reach, maybe because you aren't asking the question in the right way. 

This was an interesting activity, mostly because I helped one of my teenagers research volcanoes a few months ago, and we had trouble finding relevant material that wasn’t horribly technical.  I had much more success with the first search engine I used.  Yahoo kids on the other hand was a disaster, 5 of the first ten links were broken, three others were far too basic for grade seven (though one would have been great for younger students), and the first two were to the same site, which had lovely photos but not much information.