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This content was created for TIE Membership by Lennie Symes ||
 * ==Web Literacy for Educators== || [[image:http://membership.tie2.wikispaces.net/file/view/Tie_logo.gif/193089062/Tie_logo.gif width="205" height="109" align="center" caption="Tie_logo.gif"]]

Narrowing Your Search: Part 1
Most people when using a search engine type a simple search term, get a page with millions of hits, and look at just the first couple entries at the top of the page. Our goal is to practice techniques to narrow searches. The examples below will be using Goggle, but these techniques work with most search engines. Feel free to use other search engines for your practice.

Suppose you want to find information about orca whales. Typing //orca// produces 9 million+ hits. Typing //orca whale// reduces the hits to 400,000+. By typing two words, you are telling the search engine to display any web page that has both the word //orca// and the word //whale// anywhere on the page. If you want to narrow the search by making it a phrase (both words must be side by side), use quote marks. Typing //"orca whale"// reduces the hits by half compared to //orca whale// without the quotes.

Remember when we started that //orca// by itself has millions of hits that were reduced by adding the word whale. What kinds of sites use the term orca without whale? To find out, type //orca -whale// Note that you get government projects, software, robotic products, etc. Using the minus sign limits the results to pages that do not contain that word, which in this case is the term //whale//.

So how do you narrow searches? Type a phrase //"orca whale"// and scan the results for the type of sites you __DON"T__ want--for example, whale watching tours. Add a word with the minus sign to eliminate those sites //"orca whale" -watching// Scan the results for more unwanted sites and eliminate them //"orca whale" -watching -software -robot// //NOW// you add additional specific terms of what you are looking for: //"orca whale" -watching -software -robot reproduction//

As another example, //typing "crazy horse"// garners over 2 million hits. On the other hand, //"crazy horse" -book -memorial lakota name curly// produces 400 hits. Once students get proficient at it, they start to understand the value of the minus sign and quote marks for narrowing searches. It does take practice, though.

Do you lose legitimate sites by narrowing a search? Certainly. At times you may have widen a search (eliminating terms in the search phrase) to get back to your desired results.

Background knowledge plays a big role for narrowing searches. In the Crazy Horse example above, I had previous knowledge that Crazy Horse's name as a youth involved curly hair. I used that knowledge to find to sites that would have more depth about Crazy Horse's background, __even though that was not the specific content I was searching for__. I wanted to know more about Crazy Horse as a youth, but used the curly reference to narrow the sites. Using search words not directly related to your search is a subtle trick to help you narrow your sites where you don't know specifics of what you are looking for..

Effective searches require 1) enough knowledge about the subject to choose solid search terms, and 2) a working knowledge of search techniques to know which terms will narrow the search to your advantage. That is why it is so important for educators to be proficient at these skills, because deeper research skills need to be taught--most students do not learn them on their own.

The main issue with students is that they perceive themselves to be very good at finding information on the Internet. In the Classroom Connections laptop project surveys, students consistently rated themselves very high in their ability to search, yet in focus groups when asked for specific research processes they have been taught, few could identify any.

Students know how to add search terms to narrow searches, but most don't know to use deeper research skills. The difficult part with students is that narrowing searches becomes **hard work**, and they are used to searches being quick and simple. Until they get better at the skill, you may need to initially make stipulations on how much they must narrow the search before you accept the results--e.g. they cannot use search results until they are under a thousand hits.

By the way, using quotes is also a great tool for teachers to gather evidence for plagiarism. For example, if you have a student paper that uses the phrase //"The assumption that education already is using technology widely is unfounded"// you can search the entire phrase in your search engine using the quote marks. Try copying and pasting the phrase above into a search engine (with the quote marks) and discover what document it came from.

Now it is your turn. **Your activity is to begin with a search term that garners millions of hits. Scan the results for inappropriate results and narrow the results with a minus sign. Do this two or more times. Then look for phrasing with quote marks to narrow even more. Your final search should utilize both quote marks and minus signs to get the number of hits under 1000.**