Empowerment Technology

1. Contextualized
Online Search and
Research Skills
LESSON 3

2. When do you say that an
information contained in web
pages is credible or not?

3. Did you type the whole question
on the search box?

4. Are the authors of article you get
your answers from are credible?

5. On this lesson, we will learn how
to evaluate website’s credibility
and use keywords to specify our
search term.

6. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
1. When searching online, narrow your topic.
Identify the key concepts or important ideas.
Assuming that you would like to search for the
answer to this question:
“What precautionary measures should you observe
when you are logged in in a public computer?”

10. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
From the question, the keywords are:
precautionary measures, observed, logged-in,
public computer.
Keywords are terms that are used in by most
search engines to find related documents.

11. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
2.Put the word “AND” between each keyword to
create a search string.
You may type the following in the search box:
Precautionary measures AND observe AND logged-
in AND public computer

15. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
3. Identify synonyms of the key words. Not all
databases or articles use the same words to
describe a topic. Group similar words together by
using the word “OR” for a quick and relevant
search.

16. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
In the case of our example: the synonyms of some
of the keywords are:
Precautionary measures – preventive measures
Observe – pay attention to
Logged-in – signed-in

17. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
You may type the following in the search box:
Precautionary measures OR preventive measures
AND observe OR pay attention to AND logged-in OR
signed-in AND public computer

21. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
4. Review the first pages returned. If these are
not helpful, change your keywords for a better
description.
In this case you may remove the phrase “pay
attention to” and then type the following in the
search box:

22. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
Precautionary measures OR preventive measures
AND observe AND logged-in or signed-in AND public
computer.
This gives you another set of search results.

23. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
5. Use the plus (+) sign for a more specific
search. Just type + before a keyword to indicate
that the word after the sign is a required word that
must be found in the search.
Example: +preventive measures

24. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
6. Use the minus (-) sign for a more specific
search. If you want to exclude a word from your
search, place a minus sign just before (without any
space) the word you want to exclude.
Example: public computers -personal

25. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
6. Use the minus (-) sign for a more specific
search. If you want to exclude a word from your
search, place a minus sign just before (without any
space) the word you want to exclude.
Example: public computers -personal

26. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
7. Use wildcards for a broader search.
Wildcard characters (*) let you find variations of a
word. Example: measur*

27. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
8. Use quotation marks to find phrases or
names. Enclose the phrase or names that you
want to search in quotation marks.
Example: “precautionary measures"

28. Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills
9. Use several search engines. Search engines
are programs that look for documents based from
specified keywords and return these documents
where the keywords were found.
Major search engines include Google, Yahoo (which
uses Google), AltaVista, Bing, and Lycos.

29. What is the significance of using
keywords when searching for
information on the web?

30. In short, using keywords in your web content
sends a strong signal to Google about relevance.
The more relevant keywords are used in searches,
the more often your web page will appear in
search results.

31. Evaluating Websites
1. What are the domain of the website?
The domain of the website tells you to type of entity that
owns the website.
1. .gov
2. .mil
3. .edu
4. .org

32. Evaluating Websites
1. What are the domain of the website?
The domain of the website tells you to type of entity that
owns the website.
5. .com
6. .net

33. Evaluating Websites
1. What are the domain of the website?
The domain of the website tells you to type of entity that
owns the website.
Example : www.Wisconsin.gov
◦www.wiscon.edu
◦www.Wiscon.com

34. Evaluating Websites
Website must be evaluated with a CRITICAL EYE.
Only look at webpages and website that look to be
legitimate, reliable and credible.
Look at the domain.(.gov,.com,.edu.,.net, etc)
Figure out the purpose of website (advocacy, business,
informational, news or personal)

35. Evaluating Websites
Evaluate how the page looks.
Is it free of grammatical and spelling errors.
Does it look professionally designed.
How much advertising is on the page?
Is the page up to date?
Do the links work.

36. Evaluating Websites
3. What is the purpose of the document and why was it
produced?
It is also important to check the document’s purpose and
why it was produced. The document should provide accurate
information and must be objective in presenting it. Some
websites produce documents for the purpose of motivating
users to buy products. If this is the case, information might
be biased. However, bias is not necessarily bad but you need
to investigate the author or connections.

37. Evaluating Websites
4. When was the document published and updated?
The document should be regularly updated. As to the
freshness of the date, it depends on the information
needed. The links should also be up-to-date. There should
be no dead links.