Ms. Cheby's Home Page

Internet Research:
How to find what you looking for online and use it in your paper
By Ms. Cheby

Standards and Resources

In this lesson we will learn how to use both the internet and the library to do research. The skills you learn in this lesson are skills you will be able to use in all your classes or anytime you need to research information for yourself (i.e. finding colleges, scholarships, jobs, buying cars or other products, etc.).

Objectives:

Students will be able to recognize various parts of a 'url' and analyze the parts to determine information about a website.
Students will be able to formulate a plan for researching a topic and use internet search engines.
Students will be able to evaluate whether or not a website is valid and useful for inclusion in research.
Students will be able to collect data for citing online sources and for creating bibliographies for online sources.

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Creating a Research Strategy | Part 3:Evaluating Web Sources| Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz

Part 1: Internet Basics

Open the worksheet here in word to type your answers or ask the teacher for a worksheet.

Take the internet quiz. Record you score in section one on your worksheet

Open the Web Research Guide and use the links under Lesson 2: What are Search Tools? to answer the following questions on your worksheet.
What is a search engine?
Why are results different when using different search engines?
Use one search engines (i.e. Google and Yahoo) to look up Plagiarism. Fill in the name of the search engine and the first two sites that come up in your search.
What is a directory? How is it different from a search engine?
What are the benefits of using a directory over a search engine? The drawbacks?
Choose a directory and search again for Plagiarism.
To practice what you've learned about search engines, complete the Scavenger Hunt Actvity and answer the questions in complete sentences on your answer sheet.

Go to this new link and answer these questions:
What is a URL?
What are the 5 main parts (don't confuse with extensions) of a URL?
What are the 5 main extensions where websites 'live' and what does each one mean?
Using the answers in #10 identify each part of the url for my homepage (www.geocities.com/lcheby/Cheby.htm). Use this description of a url if you need more help. (i.e. www = world wide web). Be sure to include the subdirectories.
Guess the URL. For each site, write down your guess for the what the url would be for that particular business or organization and then write down the correct URL. (hint: use the 5 main extensions.)

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Evaluating Web Sources|Part 3 :Creating a Research Strategy | Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz

Part 2: Evaluating Web Sites

First, read all the pages in Criteria for Evaluating a Website. Then answer the questions below:

What are the 5 main questions you should ask when evaluating a website?
Can we be sure that all information on the internet is checked by editors or fact-checkers? What questions can you ask yourself to be confident a site has accurate information?
If a site does not have a date showing when the information was posted or has a lot of broken links, would it be a good site to use for research?
How can the site’s extension help us decide if the site is valid for research?

Answer on the back of the handout and/or your own paper:
Answer all 5 questions to determine if the following site is valid for research: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Answer all 5 questions to determine if the following site is valid for research: Drug Busts = Jim Crow

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Evaluating Web Sources|Part 3 :Creating a Research Strategy | Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz

Part 3: Creating a Strategy

In this section you will learn and practice the steps of creating a strategy for research.
For this lesson, you will follow the steps of research using the topic Plagiarism.

Open the Web Research Guide for Creating a Strategy. You will practice Steps 1, 2, and 4 of research.

Read the examples for Step1: Formulate Questions. Formulate your own questions for the topic Plagiarism.
Read the examples for Step 2: List Possible Sources, then complete the step on your worksheet for our topic of plagiarism.
Complete for Step 4: Identify Keywords -- List key words to use in a search. Use your questions from Step 1 to find possible key words.
Write all answers on your worksheet.
Step 5: Begin your Research. First choose a your search engine. (Refer back to Lesson 1, #3a.)
Write down the keywords you entered in the search engine.
Find three sources from your search engine that you think will be useful and write down the urls and page titles.
Choose a directory to use and write down the directory and its url.
Using the same keywords, find three sources from a directory and write their url and page titles.
What is a boolean search and the three types of boolean searches?
Use a booleen search in the search engine you used (often under advanced search). Write down which fields you entered each word in your boolean search.
Write down three new possibly useful sources (Page titles and URLs)

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Evaluating Web Sources|Part 3 :Creating a Research Strategy | Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz

Part 4: Citing Web Sources

Use this link to answer questions #1 -4

Use this link to answer questions #5 -7

What is plagiarism?
Name three things you can do to avoid plagiarizing.
What is paraphrasing?
What is the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing?
When should you use direct quotations?
What is the difference between an in-text citation and a works cited list? Do you need both?
What information do you need for the in-text citation?
What information do you need for an entry on the works cited list?
Examine the MLA Citation Examples then try the activity to see how many you get right. Correct your answers as needed.

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Evaluating Web Sources|Part 3 :Creating a Research Strategy | Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz

Part 5: What have you learned?

Congratulations! You should now be an expert on conducting online research.

Take the quiz and see what you learned. Compare to the quiz you took in Part 1.
Now, put your knowledge to the test. Using the sites you found in your search, answer the questions you asked when creating your strategy (Part 2). Write each question and for your answers paraphrase or quote the site where you found your answer. Be sure to include a works cited page at the end.

Remember, this page will remain online for you to use as a resource for this or any other class where you must conduct research. So now you should have at least two sites in your personal bookmarks of resources: Ms. Cheby's Homepage and the Classzone Web Research Guide

Part 1: Where to Begin | Part 2:Evaluating Web Sources|Part 3 :Creating a Research Strategy | Part 4:Citing Web Sources | Part 5:Expert Quiz