We gleaned this succinct summary from a listserv called biolab.
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 14:18:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Carol Burton To: Multiple recipients of list <biolab@hubcap.clemson.edu> Subject: RE: Searching the Net! Status:
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I have been coordinating an NSF project - Critical Thinking and Information literacy Across the Curriculum (CTILAC) for the last year and so have been doing a lot with this topic. Much of this has been said on this list at different times, but bears repeating.
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...students need to know not just how to search the Web but when. The Internet is often not the most appropriate source of information, but students have to be pushed to look at print sources, both books and periodicals. Yes you can find articles on the Web from reputable (and other) journals ....... but they can be summaries, not the complete article. This is often the case with commercial journals (think about this - if your business is selling magazines, why would you give away your articles?) Even with the complete article the graphs, table and pictures may be missing, and the information they contain. It's always a good idea to check the actual journal. Especially with personal sites, that often have an ax to grind, the article content may be changed. It's very easy to do, they will leave the citation so it looks relevant and accurate, but unless you check the original you won't know how it was changed.
The librarians are a great source of information - they've been doing the technology stuff for a long time, and communicating electronically long before the Web became so popular. They are very familiar with the latest searching tips and techniques.
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The CTILAC site is http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/lmc/ilac/ You can use any of the assignments, please credit the source - and we'd like feedback on how you used them.
Other sites: The following site has short tutorials and exercises on the information research process. http://www.lib.calpoly.edu/infocomp/modules/index.html
This is a good tutorial on Boolean operators http://florin.syr.edu/webarch/searchpro/boolean_tutorial.html
Searching the Web
Webhound has excellent tutorials and worksheets on searching the Internet http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/webhound/index.html If you have students you are cocky about their search skills get them to do WebHound's Scavenger Hunt - it takes a really skilled searcher to complete.
Information on understanding and decoding Uniform Resource Locators (URL) http://www.library.jhu.edu/elp/useit/evaluate/url.html
Evaluating information on web pages
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Several exercises and examples. http://lib.msu.edu/staff/susabeck/evalexpl.html -
The ICYouSee guide to Critical Thinking about what you see on the Web. http://www.ithaca.edu/library/Training/hott.html
Carol T. Burton Bellevue Community College Bellevue, WA 98007 425-603-4016
Used with permission.