This is an excellent tutorial for digital and information literacy. I have used it successfully in two schools with middle school students. At present I am focusing  all the year 8's through the SOSE faculty in my school. I use this tutorial as the teacher-librarian and work with the subject teacher and the class but this tuorial can be used by the subject teachers themselves.

I usually start with an explanation of information and digital literacy and why it is important to develop these skills. I then ask students how they search and explain that almost anyone can get a result if they type something into google but to become a discerning user of information is to set one's self up for life long, effective learning. It is wise to walk around and see if students type in the phrase to search for the site correctly 'Learn the net searching the web',as the url is rather long (though this is good practice to be able to type this accurately for students too).

I came across this site when I was searching for information literacy resources I could take from school to school.

I have set these questions for students to answer in a word document while completing the tutorial. The tutorial can be accessed through the link below:

Learn the Net: Searching the Web

As you work through this tutorial you will need to answer these questions. Refer to the questions in your answer. Write in sentences. The more detail you provide the better.

Questions for the tutorial

1/ P1 What is a search engine?

2/ P 1 What are the two categories of search engines?

3/ P 1 What are directories? Give one example of a search engine that is a directory.

4/ P 1 What are indexes? Give two examples of search engines that are indexes.

5/ P2 Why is it good to put quotation marks around a search term?

6/ P 2 Why is it a good search strategy to use "San Francisco cable car schedule"?

7/ P2 Ask.com uses technology called natural language query what does this mean?

8/ P2 Why is it a good to use a search engine that uses web-indexing robots?

9/ P 3 Who was George Boole and what are Boolean operators?

10. P 3 What would be the result if the search strategies were used below?

cable AND Car

cable OR car

cable NOT car

11/ P 3 What is a meta-search? Do the search on the screen for the mamma search engine then do a screen dump (print screen + control then control V)of your results in your word document. Choose your search subject for example computers.

12/ P 3 Why isn't the internet the best place to find certain informaiton?

13/ P 3 When was this website last updated? 

 

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