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Student Activity Sheet Grade Level/Section: __________________

Name: Day 04
__________________________________

Lesson Title: Contextualizing effective online searching

and research skills Score:

Learning Objectives
References
1. Understand basic searching concepts and develop search
Effective Searching Strategies and
strategies from web search tools
Techniques by INASP, 2013
2. Carry out online searches using a variety of information
retrieval systems.
APP001SupplementaryReadingDay04.pdf
3. Demonstrate knowledge of the major information sources
and reference tools to answer standard user inquiries;

Review/Lesson Preview. (Write your answers on the space provided in this sheet.)
Read the questions carefully then select the best answer among the choices.

1. Thou shalt not copy ______________

software or materials. computer work.
a. Public-domain 3. Thou shalt not create __________________
b. Copyrighted software or games.
c. Self created a. Difficult
2. Which of the following is NOT a rule listed b. Copyrighted
in Computer Discovery's Ten c. Easy
Commandments of Computer Ethics? d. Harmful
a. Thou shalt not use a computer to 4. _________________It is defined as the
email application of classical and ethical principles
b. Thou shalt not use a computer to when using computer technology.
cyber bully. These are small software programs that are designed
c. Thou shalt not use a computer to to spread from one computer to another and to
interfere with other people's interfere with computer operation.
Learning Activities
Concept Notes

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Why Effective Searching is important?

Electronic resources can mean huge volumes of data:

⇒ --In November 2004 Google claimed to have a database containing more than 8 billion web pages—and it is widely
accepted that Google only gets about half of the available content! There are also more than 20,000 full text
journals available online—which means there are a very large number of high quality academic papers out there.
⇒ Add to this newspaper archives and similar online databases and we are dealing with a lot of information!
⇒ It’s not unusual to get 1,000s or 10,000s of hits when doing searches of various electronic resources and it can be
difficult to sift and sort this information. Before you know it we are faced with an information overload situation.
⇒ In some ways it’s a “nice” problem to be faced with—maybe it’s better too much information than too little — but
we all only have a limited amount of time with which to find the best and most appropriate information.
⇒ Obviously quality and evaluation issues are important, but narrowing down the number of ‘hits’ should be a high
priority considering its relevance and accuracy.
⇒ Additionally, with time online and access to computers at a premium, effective searching can be seen to be very
important.

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 PHINMA-University of Pangasinan APP 001/Empowerment Technologies
Student Activity Sheet Grade Level/Section: __________________
Name: __________________________________ Day 04

Guidelines for Effective Search Strategy

1. Define your Information Need

Careful choice of search term(s) is vital
i. What keywords do you think will appear on the site/article you want?
ii. What key concepts is it a part of or related to?
iii. Are there any synonyms for these keywords or concepts?
iv. Are there any alternative spellings for your keywords/concepts
v. Are plurals or capitalisation involved?
Example: I want to find information about the health implications of water pollution
Keywords–’water’ ‘pollution’ ‘health’
Concepts–‘environmental degradation’ or ‘agricultural management’ or ‘health’
Synonyms- rivers, lakes, sea, coastal,’domestic water’, etc
– ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, etc
Alternative spellings: none
Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)
Capitals: maybe the name of a specific lake, disease, region
2. Decide which resources to use
What sources are appropriate for your information need?
i. Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages
ii. Newspapers and magazines
iii. Subject gateways, databases, catalogues
iv. Journals—titles, abstracts or full text
v. Reference resources, e.g., encyclopaedias, dictionaries
vi. Books
vii. Grey literature, e.g. government publications
viii. Print or electronic
3. Find out how they function
Electronic search tools may interpret your search terms using the ff. techniques
i. Boolean operators
ii. Phrase and proximity searching
iii. Truncation or wildcard functions
4. Run your search
5. Review and refine what you have searched
v Evaluate the information to ensure it is relevant, accurate, of high enough quality, etc

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BOOLEAN SEARCHING

Query: I would like information about education or literacy.

Query: I'm interested in the relationship between education and
In this search, we will retrieve records in which AT LEAST ONE of
the search terms is present. We are searching on the terms education literacy.
and also literacy since documents containing either of these words In this search, we retrieve records in which BOTH of the search terms
are present. The shaded area overlapping the two circles representing
might be relevant. This is illustrated by:
all the records that contain both the word “education” and the word
o the shaded circle with the word education representing all
“literacy” illustrates this
the records that contain the word “education" Notice how we do not retrieve any records with only “education" or
o the shaded circle with the word literacy representing all the
only “literacy"
records that contain the word “literacy"
o the shaded overlap area representing all the records that The more terms or concepts we combine in a search with AND logic,
contain both “education" and “literacy" the fewer records we will retrieve.
OR logic is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or
concepts. Search tools may use ‘include all of the words’ or + or a number of
Some search tools use the words ‘include at least one of these words’ other symbols to carry out an ‘AND’ search.
to indicate an ‘OR’ search.

Query: I want to see information about education, but not secondary

education
In this search, we retrieve records in which ONLY ONE of the terms is
present. The shaded area with the word ‘education’ representing all the
education secondary records containing the word ‘education’ illustrates this.

No records are retrieved in which the word “secondary" appears, even if

the word “education" appears there too
NOT logic excludes records from your search results. Be careful when
you use NOT: the term you do want may be present in an important way
Query: I want to see information about in documents that also contain the word you wish to avoid. For example,
education, but I want to avoid seeing the an excluded article might say ‘In this paper I will be discussing the
anything about secondary impact of funding cuts on education, and will consider the tertiary rather
than secondary sector…’
Search tools may use—or ‘exclude these words’ to carry out a ‘NOT

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Search strategies and techniques: (Kids, you may also try to perform searches based from the examples given in this section)

1. Boolean Searching
v Uses commands (operators) such as AND, OR, NOT
v Different search tools may use different symbols
v AND +
v NOT –
v Different search tools may use OR or AND as a default setting
v Sometimes Boolean operators must be entered in capital letters (e.g. Synergy)
2. Phrase and proximity searching

v Using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase, e.g. “information literacy”
v Using NEAR allows you to specify how close to each other the terms you are searching for should be.
o You use the command like this: information NEAR literacy
3. Truncation or wildcard functions
v Truncation: place a symbol at the end of the word so you search for variant endings of that word
o E.g. litera$ would look for literature, literacy, literal
v Wildcards: place a symbol within a word to find variations on it
o E.g. analy*e would find analyse or analyze
o Different symbols— including $ * # ! : —Are used by different search tools

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Developmental Activities: (Write your answers for No. 4 on the space provided in the sheet)

Instructions: Follow the instructions provided below.

Practice:
1. Write a general search term on a piece of paper
Ex. Social Media
2. Exchange it with a partner
3. Using the same search engine (google) run searches using:
1. The original term:
Type: Social Media
2. Synonyms of the term
Type: Community Channels
3. Boolean operators
Type: Social AND Media
Social OR Media
4. Discuss with your partner how the results of each search were different
Activity: Please DO NOT use the above-given example
1. Write a general search term on a piece of paper
2. Exchange it with a partner
3. Using the same search engine (Google) run searches using:
a. The original term: ____________________________
b. Synonyms of the term: ________________________
c. Boolean operators: ___________________________
4. Discuss with your partner how the results of each search were different
Questions to consider:
Were the results significantly different? If so, how? ________________________________
Which terms/combinations retrieved the most results? The least? ____________________
Did certain terms/combinations seem to retrieve more helpful results? ________________

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Student Activity Sheet Grade Level/Section: __________________
Name: __________________________________ Day 04

Guided Practice: (Write your answers on the space provided in this sheet.)
Instructions: Open your browser and type Google scholar to open the Website.Try to search Google Scholar
database more systematically by identifying ‘search concepts’, find out suitable keywords/descriptors for each
concept, and use appropriate Boolean and proximity operators for combining these terms. Use Boolean
operators for more complicated topics. Use advanced search technique.

1. One PhD student has approached you for getting references on the topic “Preferences and Motivating
Factors for Knowledge Sharing by Students.” You should be able to write down the author/s of the
journal. ______________________________________
2. Check how many articles were authored by Rahaman and published on the digital libraries in the
journal of Library Review from 2010 to 2015. _________
3. The Director of User Services from NLB is preparing a policy document to be presented to Singapore
government. Can you find for her articles about censorship in public libraries published in 2013-2015?
If yes, how many? ______________
4. Check how many articles written by the following researchers are available through the Google
scholar database.
a. Professor Schubert Foo ___________
b. Associate Prof. Christopher Khoo Soo Guan ____________
c. Assistant Prof. Desiree Cendana ____________
d. Dr. Nigel Cabison _______________
e. Associate Prof. Mian Shaheen Majid ______________

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Student Activity Sheet Grade Level/Section: __________________
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Independent Practice (Write your answers on the space provided in this sheet.)
1. What are the steps in conducting effective search strategy?
a.
b.
c.
d.
2. If I am to search for the term “management” and help me to expand the search by including its synonyms,
which operator should I use?
_____________________
3. If I would like to search at least one of the search terms, which operator should I use?
_____________________
4. Search for all the journals authored by Chan, published in the Journal of Knowledge Management from
2014-2015. How many items did you get?
_______________

Closure Activity: (Summative assessment)

Answer the ff. questions before end of the class:
1. Enumerate the various searching techniques that you can apply when conducting research.
a. __________ b. _________. c. __________
2. Name the 3 web search tools that you can use when searching for relevant information.
a. ________ b__________ c. __________
3. What are the 3 Boolean operators used for Boolean searching?
a. __________ b. __________ c. __________
4. When conducting online search, what element should we measure/evaluate?
a. ______________ b. _____________

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Enrichment Activity
To conduct the search, proceed to:http://w3.nexis.com/sources/
Task A: Understanding Lexis-Nexis System
Before you begin searching the given topics, spend some time (15-20 minutes) to understand different search
features of Lexis-Nexis system. Quickly go through the Help topics for different types of news and other
categories of information sources.
Task B: Searching Lexis-Nexis
1. Get all TV and radio news transcripts on the 48th National Day parade in Singapore for the period from
08 August to 13 August 2013.
2. Find all news items on typhoon Ator published on 15/16 August 2013 in Asian newspapers. To get
more relevant item, you may confine your search to ‘headlines’ filed.
3. News items discussing where about of the ousted Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi, published in
American newspapers.
4. News about American solider Bradley Manning involved in Wikileak scandal, published during the last
one week in non-American newspapers and wires.
5. Get all news items on sexual and racial discrimination in universities published in the Chronicle of
Higher Education.
6. One lawyer is interested in all cases on child pornography heard by Ontario Superior Courts during the
last two years.
7. Find out basic information about a Singaporean company called Chan Brothers Travel Pte Ltd. Also
find out its mailing address and telephone number.
Explore Activity
1. Open your browser
2. Search for the word “ICT” from Wikipedia and Britannica encyclopedia.
3. Write down the definition provided by Britannica and Wikipedia in a separate paragraph.
4. Do they have the same thought? If yes, combine the idea from Wikipedia and Britannica to form a
single definition for the word “ICT”. If no, write down their difference.
5. Put your answer in a short coupon bond (8.5 x 11) then submit it to your teacher before start of the
next session.

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