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Web Search Strategies

Web Search Strategies
The Web may seem like a vast ocean when it comes to finding something you need. Thankfully, search engines can help turn oceans of information into small pools that make finding information easier. Before we dive in, let’s talk a bit about how search works on the Web. Search engines go out and try to account for every word on every webpage. When you search for a word, the search engine finds all the pages where the word appears, and displays them in the search results. The problem is that there are often too many results. Say you’re looking for a specific kind of fish, and these represent all the websites on the Web. Try to imagine the exact fish and describe it in the search box. But to be a smart searcher, you should know some basic shortcuts. Here’s another shortcut. To remove the results about hair, place a hyphen or minus sign just before the word you want to exclude, which means “show me the pages about mullet, but take away results relating to hair.”

Media Literacy Global rating average: 0.0 out of 50.00.00.00.00.0 These sites focus on media literacy. Learn about types of media literacy and their influences, and how to analyze information conveyed by media. Includes resources, lesson plans, online activities, and games. There are links to eThemes Resources on the History of Media and Media Techniques in Advertising. Grades Links GCSE Media Studies See various modules that aim to help students build skills and in-depth knowledge about different forms of media. Education Standards Request State Standards

Sweet Search World Wide Web Have you ever wondered, when you visit a website, where those words and images come from? These days, as long as we have an Internet connection, using the Web is pretty easy. We can visit billions of pages on things from pet alligators to the weather in Holland. To help figure out how it works, let’s pretend we can get really small, follow the wires and explore what makes the Web work. If we could see the connection, the information coming through it would look like little packets of code. For this, we use a web browser. It’s called a “server.” We do this with web addresses. The reason we call it a “web” is that all the servers are connected. Web pages use shortcuts or “links” – words and images we can click, that direct us to page after page. Together, this system makes up the World Wide Web. To visit a website, we type in a web address or click a link.

California's Velcro Crop Under Challenge by Ken Umbach California's important Velcro crop, vital to the clothing, footwear, and sporting goods industries, has been severely stressed by drought, disease, and pests. Background Velcro®, an engineered crop, consists of two distinct strains: hooks and loops. California's climate and soil conditions make the state an ideal venue for and successful producer of both strains of Velcro. For competitive and industrial confidentiality reasons, of course, the crop is not widely highlighted in crop reports. The Issues Three issues have conspired to threaten and diminish the crop in California's southern San Joaquin Valley, especially drought-affected Kern County.Dry and windy conditions have caused hook and loop spores to commingle even across widely spaced fields, resulting in tangled Velcro bolls combining both strains and unprocessable by any known means. Status As the chart and table below so starkly show, the combined assaults on the Velcro crop have had marked effects. Recommendations

Google Search: 10 Questions & Answers to Help You Search Smarter! At the Google Teacher Academy Lisa Thumann awed me with her lively presentation on Google Search. I must do an average of 15 searches a day on a wide range of topics. I search for articles, images, power points presentations, key words, etc. but I had no idea what Google search could do for me and my students. What I know now will radically change how I teach my students to research in the future, so I wanted to share some cool tips with other educators. First, let’s get the lingo down (since I didn’t know the terminology before I started digging into the resources Lisa provided). Your search is called a “query” and you type it in the “query box.” I know that query means question or inquiry, but I had no idea that is what you called the little box on the Google homepage. Note: When I type an example query, I will use brackets [ ] to indicate that it is a query. Here is some quick and interesting information on how Google improves your searches. 1. 2. Do you want to find PDFs, PPTs, or XLS?

Social Networking Networks get things done. Whether it's sending a letter or lighting your home. Networks make it happen. To get from Chicago to Santa Fe, we need to see the network of roads that will get us there. Of course, people networks can help us with finding jobs, meeting new friends, and finding partners. The problem with social networks in the real world is that most of the connections between people are hidden. This problem is being solved by a type of web site called a social networking site. Here's how it works. When you find someone, you click a button that says, "Add as Friend". What's really cool, is that you can see who your friends know, and who your friends' friends know. This solves a real world problem because your network has hidden opportunities. Like a map for a highway, they can show you the people network that can help you get to your next destination, whether it's a job, a new partner, or a great place to live.

New Hartford, MN Our direct URL: Come for a visit! Please stay for a lifetime! Welcome to New Hartford, Minnesota. See for yourself: Go to our site Menu to take a Virtual Tour of New Hartford! New Hartford, Minnesota's history dates back to the mid 1800's when it was founded by a group of German and Norwegian immigrants who left Hartford, Connecticut after the Great Hartford Circus Fire of '55. Join us for a wonderful time.

Search operators - Search Help You can use symbols or words in your search to make your search results more precise. Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn’t part of a search operator. Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. Refine image searches Overall Advanced Search Go to Advanced Image Search. Search for an exact image size Right after the word you're looking for, add the text imagesize:widthxheight. Example: imagesize:500x400 Common search techniques Search social media Put @ in front of a word to search social media. Search for a price Put $ in front of a number. Search hashtags Put # in front of a word. Exclude words from your search Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. Search for an exact match Put a word or phrase inside quotes. Search within a range of numbers Put .. between two numbers. Combine searches Put "OR" between each search query. Search for a specific site Put "site:" in front of a site or domain. Search for related sites See Google’s cached version of a site

Blogs You've seen the word, you've seen the web sites and you may even have one. But have you ever wondered: What's the big deal about blogs? To make sense of blogs, you have to think about the news and who makes it. We'll look at news in the 20th vs. the 21st century to make our point. In the 20th century, the news was produced professionally. When news happened, reporters wrote the stories and a tiny group of people decided what appeared in a newspaper or broadcast. The 21st century marked the point where news became both professional and personal. As blogs became popular, they created millions of news sources and gave everyone an audience for their own version of news. With a blog...A business owner can share news about his business A mother can share news about her family Or a sport star can share news with fans These people are all "bloggers". How did this happen? Blogs are websites that are organized by blog posts - these are individual news stories, like articles in the paper.

McWhortle Enterprises, Inc. Police embracing tech that predicts crimes New technology allows police to predict crime before it happens, but some agencies can't afford the software. Predictive analytic software PredPol anticipates future crime based upon past activity. The program was adapted from similar software meant to predict earthquake aftershocks.Many police stations still use obsolete technology due to small budgets and aversion to change.Even so, police depend heavily upon social media to solve crimes. (CNN) -- For something that predicts the future, the software is deceptively simple looking. A map of a city is marked up with small red squares, each indicating a 500-by-500-foot zone where crimes are likely to take place next. The program is called PredPol, and it calculates its forecasts based on times and locations of previous crimes, combined with sociological information about criminal behavior and patterns. PredPol's system features a map of a city marked with red squares to show zones where crimes are likely to occur.

Ethics for Students Global rating average: 0.0 out of 50.00.00.00.00.0 These sites provide background knowledge for students on the importance of copyright. Ignoring copyright can lead to plagiarism or piracy which are both presented through videos, writing activities, case studies, and simulation. Grades Links Brain Pop This site has some free information to use with students. Request State Standards Google reports 'alarming' rise in government censorship requests Google says government requests to remove Web content are way upIn last half of 2011, U.S. agencies asked Google to remove 6,192 pieces of content That's up 718% compared with the previous six-month periodGoogle released its biannual transparency report Sunday night (CNN) -- Western governments, including the United States, appear to be stepping up efforts to censor Internet search results and YouTube videos, according to a "transparency report" released by Google. "It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google, wrote in a blog post on Sunday night. "For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.

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