Powerpoint for the "Web Literacy" session.

1. A Few Details Before We Start It would be to your advantage to have an internet browser open so you can try some exercises yourself. If you are early you could try an Information Literacy Quiz @ http://novemberlearning.com/resources/information-literacy-resources/i-information-literacy-quiz/ How much do you know about information literacy? Take the following quiz to see if you are Somewhat Savvy (0-5 points), Moderately Savvy (6-10 points) or Downright Nerdy (10+ points) Answer key to the Information Literacy Quiz Finally I would like to credit Alan November for the skills and content presented. © November Learning, Inc. [2006] http://www.novemberlearning.com

2. To help frame our thinking. Consider: How much control or filtering should our schools exert over access to the internet and other social media and informational digital tools? Or, what can we do (if anything) to prepare our students to use these extensive resources properly? Things are changing so fast in a digital world. Is this worth our efforts to educate our students?

3. Web Literacy - The Library Skills of the 21st Centuryv.3.1 • Verifying Information & • Locating Information

4. Topics for today: Is there a role for Libraries today? Verifying Information Web Literacy Evaluate A Website What is a web address: Basic Overview Martin Luther King. Org Easywhois.com Archive.org …

9. A Question … continued. What skills would be necessary for us to know and for us to teach our students? … our purpose today!

10. A Scenario: Grade 5 Research Assignment … http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

11. Web Literacy - Overview Defined as the Library Skills needed to successfully find accurate information on the Internet. Without these skills, you won’t understand how the Internet - and information on the internet - is organized and who controls it. …

12. … Web Literacy - Overview 2 Reading (and critical thinking about your reading) is decoding information in whatever media you are in. This media - the Internet - is dynamic. It is forever changing. What did you think of the Tree Octopus site? What do you think a young student would think of it?

13. zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ Great looking site. How do you know it is accurate? Where there other sources / sites? Check out: * http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_octopus_endangered Google search the main part of the address: http://zapatopi.net/ What do you get? Does this sound reliable? What does the site description suggest to you? Look at the information Google can show you about this site.

14. Other Web Sites to Validate A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html Appropriate for use in middle/high school, this site is written by an engineering prof at Northwestern University. It presents a version of the truth and is a clear example of why our kids need to think critically about information on the Internet. All about explorers: http://www.allaboutexplorers.com If you teach anything about exploration, this site is a must. It's smart, slick and cleverly done, plus has a host of great activities. California's Velcro Crop under Challenge http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html Did you know about the Velcro shortage in California? Use this fun site to help students separate fact from fiction on the web. Dihydrogen Monoxide www.dhmo.org Who knew water could be so hazardous. A good site to use with middle school students. Have them click through the forward links on the site. Does the web site reference any other authors? Dog Island Free Forever www.thedogisland.com A puppy dog paradise. Great site for all ages. Feline reactions to bearded men http://improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html … © November Learning [2006] www.novemberlearing.com

15. … Other Web Sites to Validate - 2 Martin Luther King www.martinlutherking.org This seemingly innocent web site address calls for the abolition of Martin Luther King Day and promotes White Pride. Content is inappropriate for all ages. Storm Front: www.stormfront.org The publishers of this site also host the Martin Luther King site. It may be blocked by an Internet filter. The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html Does the Octopus really exist? A great site to use with all ages. Have students click through the links and read web addresses carefully. Victorian Robots www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html A great site to use with all ages. It has even stumped historians. Have students truncate the web address so they are just left with the domain name, www.bigredhair.com. This will give them some insight into the validity of this site. Taken from: http://www.novemberlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=159&type=art&site=179&parentid=56 © November Learning [2006] www.novemberlearing.com

16. Which of the following web sites is real? http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html http://www.firstgenetics.com/ http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/index.php http://www.golfcross.com/ http://www.buydehydratedwater.com/ http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html http://www.thedogisland.com/ http://www.bandersnatch.com/guide.htm http://www.wwwdotcom.com/ http://www.stephenswork.com/funkyshoes/index.html http://descy.50megs.com/NewHartford/newhtfd.html http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

17. The Controversy that is Wikipedia: A reference source that can be edited by anyone! How can that possibly work? How do Wikipedia and other wiki sites work? Paradigm shift: Going from being written by experts to being edited by a group of knowledgeable people. Encourages multiple points of view.

18. Understanding Web Addresses - The Basics http://www.k12connect.ca/~n_kaspar/ The Domain The Extension Indicators of a personal page The presence of a name in the URL such as jdoe and a tilde ~ or % or the word users or people or members frequently means you are on a personal web site. Check out: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/di/intro.html What are the clues in this address that can help you decide if it is a credible web site?

19. Anatomy of a Web Address © November Learning, Inc. [2006] www.novemberlearning.com

20. Some Common Extensions … .edu = Educational organization (most US universities) .k12 = US school site (not all US schools use this) .ac = Academic institution (outside of US) .sch = School site (some schools outside of the US use this) .com = Company (usually .co in the UK) .org = Any organization .gov = Government agency .net = Network .mil = Military institution .biz = Commercial .name = Commercial .pro = Commercial .info = Commercial Country Codes (a few examples) .uk United Kingdom .ca Canada .za South Africa A complete list of all URL extensions can be found @ http://www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/noframes/nf.domains.html

21. www.martinlutherking.org How do you find out who is the author of this “book” (read Internet Site)? Google Search it - a logical first step Search for “Martin Luther King” A way of looking up information in this library. Why would Google list this site as number 3 of27800000 sites? What does the description in Google say? What are sites similar to this site about?

22. www.martinlutherking.org 2 Now do the search again, but with a slight variation. Search “martinlutherking.org” (do not include the quotation marks.) Check out the “extra” information Google can show you about this site. Links in and out of this site. Check out a bit of history with a look at the cached site. Check out sites the are similar to this site or contain the term “martinlutherking.org”

23. Martinlutherking.org

24. How can we dig deeper? Easy Who Is .com A site that identifies who the author is. Information that is not necessarily on the web site.

25. www.easywhois.com What Information can we find here and can we do with it? Let’s Check out: martinlutherking.org www.discoverychannel.ca www.novemberlearning.com Try one of your own web sites.

26. The Internet is Dynamic - How can we look at the history of a web site? http://archive.org A record of how a web site has changed over time.

27. http://archive.org A site that lets you look at how other sites appeared in the past. Has several uses: Just a history of the site. What is used to look like -who it was aimed at. A time capsule. How a resource has been refined over time.

28. http://archive.org Check out: http://bccampus.ca http://www.myway.com http://martinlutherking.org http://www.des.prn.bc.ca A site of your choice.

29. This is what martinlutherking.org looked like on November 22, 1999 (It is hard to see but notice the link to Storm Front at the bottom of the page.)

30. Now that we have looked at how to verify information found on the Internet, let’s look at how to better find relevant, current and appropriate information on the Internet

31. Basic Search Approach Internet Search Tips: Focus: What are you looking for exactly Strategies: Sources & Boolean Strategies = Results Evaluate: Know that your information is credible

32. What is a Search Engine? They are a data base of collected information Two main kinds: General - Google Specific - Technorati Information is collected in two ways: By computers using robots and spiders Eg: Google By humans who evaluate the source before entering it into the data base. Eg: Yahoo

33. The Language of Searching … Keywords Words or phrases that help you find the information you want. It is a real skill to learn how to choose good key words. Boolean Operators Combining keywords effectively “And” “Or” “Not” Punctuation - “keywords” A few resources to look at: Effective Keyword Searches http://www.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/tutorials/search/index.asp Boolean Logic Primer http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html

34. Alternatives - Search Engines with Different Purposes General Search Engines Variables depend on the content of their data base Eg: Google / Yahoo / Altavista / Meta Search Engines Search the search engines Dogpile Audience / Type / Subject Specific Search Engines Audience Ask Jeeves Kids Yahooligans KidsClick Type Technorati Search for Blogs Podscope Search for Podcasts Subject Kathy Schrok’s Guide for Educators

35. A Look at Some Examples … Noodletools (A site that teaches about how to search. http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/ Ask.com http://www.ask.com/ Surfwax http://www.surfwax.com KidSite http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/

36. Let’s Try It Out … Pick a subject - any subject Pick three to five keywords for that subject Enter those keywords in exactly the same way in each of these search engines http://www.google.com http://www.ask.com/ http://www.yahoo.com http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/ http://www.dogpile.com/ Compare the first screen results for each one.

37. Google Bombing - An Aside Why is one search engine not reliable enough? How can martinlutherking.org appear at the #3 position on a Google Search? Is it possible to buy your way up the Google (or other search engines) ‘hit list’? Miserable Failure = George Bush Theatre Company - An example

38. A Look at One Specific Search Engine The Power of Google

39. Some useless facts about Google: Google has now become a word in the English language. “I googled it.” What does Google stand for? "We were thinking about very large numbers ... so we came up with the term "googol" which is the mathematical term for 10 to the hundredth (power). The correct spelling was g-o-o-g-o-l and I'm not sure that we realized that we had made a spelling error. But that was taken, anyway. There was this guy who'd already registered Googol.com, and I tried to buy it from him, but he was fond of it. So we went with Google.” BING – Because it is not Google??? Depending of your definition of the WWW, Google searches anywhere between 2% to 70% of it.

40. Web 2.0 – the Social Web The web has evolved a long way past being simply a source of information. With the social web now in full swing, it is useful to be able to search and validate information there as well. As an experiment, try Googling your own name. What comes up?

41. Search Options Specific to Google Google & Firefox Prefetching Advanced Search Template Advanced Search Operators Boolean Words Punctuation Specific Commands Domain Search Cache Search Link Search Number Range Search Definition command

42. Google Advanced Search Click on type: Link Picture Video News Then Click on Advanced Search. Note differences.

43. Going even further … Google Operators: Google has include many different operators that you can put in a search string to help you find the information you are looking for. EG: Entering “Time Berlin” gives the current time in Berlin Germany. Many of them are listed and explained here: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html

44. Site: One of the most powerful is the site: operator. It allows you to limit your search to certain sites. Research problem: You are researching the American Revolution and you want an opposing point of view. How would you find out the opinions the English had on the American Revolution? … In Google enter: site:uk “American Revolution”

45. Try it yourself: Find information on World War 2 that reflects an Italian point of view. Or choose another topic of interest. What did you get?

46. Shortened URL’s http://Bit.ly http://notlong.com/links/ http://tiny.cc/ There are many more.

47. The Invisible Web What is it? All other parts of the web that are not an html pages. Includes: data bases / spreadsheets / flash files / dynamically generated web pages / pdf’s / pictures / sounds / movies / journals / news articles / … How to search it? Learn about it and find a source that is specific to finding the information you want. http://www.robertlackie.com/invisible/index.html

48. Thank you for taking the time to attend this session!… questions or comments? Norbert Kaspar nkaspar@prn.bc.ca (250) 261-2997

49. Resources on Web Literacy http://novemberlearning.com/ This is where most of our information came from. A shameless plug – There are a couple of course offered through Alan November’s organization that is well worth taking. They are called - Teaching Zack to Think / Web Literacy for Educators Answer key to the Information Literacy Quiz If you would like a copy of this PowerPoint, please contact Norbert Kaspar