2. Finding and evaluating information

2.6. Activity

Now it's time to apply what you’ve learned. Select a research question relevant to your classroom — something you need help with or a research assignment your students might pursue. (If you need suggestions, try this list of student research topics from the Richard Bland College Library.) Follow the procedure we used above, with the prompts written below, keeping track of answers in your journal. (The journal includes a template for your answers.)

Try all of this in at least two search engines, including one you don't normally use. The most popular are Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask, but you might also try Yippy, Altavista, or another of your choosing.

1. Write out your topic as a question or a research assignment.
2. Identify the keywords.
3. Search for those keywords, evaluate the results, and refine your search:
   1. Try the keywords in a different order. Are the results different? More helpful? Less helpful?
   2. Do the results you see suggest different keywords? What happens if you try those?
   3. Are there keywords that are being interpreted differently? Are there different forms of the keywords you might try? Are there synonyms?
   4. Do any words appear to frequently in irrelevant results that might be excluded? What happens if you exclude them?
   5. Are there keywords that should be combined into exact phrases? Are there exact phrases you'd hope to see in a page answering your question? What happens if you try enclosing them in quotation marks?
4. Finally, evaluate your search and the results. Was it successful? Can you answer this question adequately using only the information available on the open web?