Week 5-Reflection

I find the MAPPing activity very interesting and eye opening.  I did not perform very well.  I did not know all the various search engines that are available for one to use.  My thoughts were google and yahoo.  What else could there be?  I was surprise by the long list of search engine available.  I had heard of dogpile and excite but they would not have easily come to my mind.  I would not have thought of 95% of those listed.

I did know why we use quotation marks in a search.  I knew the meaning of  URL but did not know the meaning of its acronym.   I heard of Boolean search terms but did not know what it was.  I was excited to know how to locate the owner of a website.  I did not know how to do this before.  I can really see the benefit of having this information when doing research and seeing basis in how information is given.

I knew a lot of the extension but not all of them. I also found it interesting to know that you can locate the history of a website.   Basically I thought that this was a good activity and quiz.  I will do this activity with my children at home to teach them the more about the Internet.  We use the Internet without really given thought into the information we are locating on the various sites.  I am guilty of just going to the first site and retrieving information not doing further research to see if it is a "good" site to get the needed information.

We must teach our students how to properly navigate the web.  If we do not they will believe that the information they are founding is true.  We must teach them how some site are simply someone's opinion and how to look up the owner of the sites they are using.  We must teach them that the first site on a search may not be the best to use for information and why.  We must teach them how to put words in the search engine to get the results they desire.  Below is a quick video on how to use search engine.  I did not know putting a minus sign in the search engine removed information.  It is interesting how to lower your search research.  What an interesting activity to show kids how to effectively use search engines.

This is my delicious account:  http://delicious.com/tammy70_07.  I once had an account but it was closed last year when they change the site.  I had many sites bookmarked.  I had networked with various teachers.  It is good to bookmark your sites and group them.  This helped when I was planning lesson and needed ideas over various concepts.  I had bookmarks of teacher sites.  I will once again develop this site and network with other educators.