Opening my browser window I click in the search box in the
top right hand corner. I type my search information, and then I scroll through
the links that appear after a few seconds.
This is how I usually perform an internet search. Though it’s easier to just use the AVG search
engine provided by my antivirus protection, I also prefer to use Bing.com to
search topics. Usually my searches are
for trivial things like “Does Jack Black wear glasses?” I searched for this
information earlier today through Safari on my iPhone. I merely typed “Jack Black” and then went
through images of the actor. (No, the
only picture I saw of him wearing glasses was where he wore sunshades.) I can
find this sort of information rapidly, and I haven’t had much need for an
in-depth internet search until school started up a few weeks ago. I was not aware before I took the tech-savvy
quiz of how much I didn’t know. I knew
that I was not a computer whiz, but I know enough to survive the day-to-day
problems. Some things that I discovered
just today was that “.com” does not stand for “computer” as I always
assumed: it stands for "company". Neither does “.net” stand for “internet”
but rather it stands for “networks.”
There were also many other endings to pages that I didn’t even know
existed or never paid attention to before.
I took note of them and I plan to make use of this information in the
future.
My habits of internet searching will take a while to
change. I have done searches many times
before, several times a day. Unless I
need to specifically find information from educational sites outside the U.S.,
I will have to search for the notes I took and use the proper “host:ac.za” or
whatever other specific search requirements.
This knowledge will affect my teaching because when I do utilize the
country codes (such as .za) I will be able to find specific information so much
easier. Finding sources for papers I
want the students to write and finding information for my own needs will be
much faster. Why didn’t I learn about
this in high school when I was forced to take a keyboarding class and a BCIS
course? I still don’t know what BCIS stands for! I certainly hope that future
students will be affected in a positive way by my knowledge of how to conduct a
proper internet search. It will help
them when I am well prepared to teach.
Although there’s nothing wrong with the way that I usually
search for information on the internet, it is very time consuming and sometimes
counterproductive. I chose to perform
the assigned activities with the “Victorian Robots” link. Yes, I partly chose it because my name was in
the link. Anyway, I found out that there are many search engines I didn’t know
about! Not only that, but once I used those engines I discovered that one of
the links from http://bigredhair.com/robots/index.html
led to another link that took me right back to the homepage. Did the author of the robots page cite a link
that just led back to itself? Or was it intended to promote the webpage? This
information, along with some other information I found when I searched for “Victorian
robots” led me to distrust the webpage.
Did those robots ever exist or are they urban legends? I was already skeptical
in the first place and when I used the information from this class I discovered
that I need to read more carefully into the websites I come across. If most people were more “information
literate” and had the ability to read critically, we may all be better off.
References
Guinan, P. (2001). Mechanical
Marvels of the Nineteenth Century. [Web. 2011]. Retrieved from http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html
USA TODAY (2008) Web
Guide; Robots in the Victorian Era.
[Web post]. Retrieved September 18, 2013, from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/hotsites/2003/2003-11-10-hotsites.htm
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