Guides to Web Searching
and Evaluating Internet Resources

 


Guides to Web Searching

Beginners Central
A chapter-by-chapter guide to using the Internet, email, ftp, etc. Includes an entertaining section on "Internet myths."

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial
A very comprehensive guide to the Internet and Internet searching.

Search Engine Features, Size, Strategies
A summary, review, and comparison of the search features and scope of different Internet search engines.

Search Tools Chart
A table that compares the different search engines.

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages
Search Engine Watch has a useful explanation of how search engines search--and how web-page creators can improve their rankings. 


Guides to Evaluating Internet Resources

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
There are many hundreds of sites with resources for teachers, but Kathy Schrock's Guide is a great place to start. It includes website evaluation forms (with different forms for different grade levels), as well as subject guides, slideshows on using the Internet and creating webquests, etc.

Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources
This guide, developed by the UCLA College Library, neatly pulls together the main issues that students need to think about. Better for teacher preparation than for student use.

Practical Steps in Evaluating Internet Resources
A similar guide from Johns Hopkins University.

Web Page Evaluation
This set of lessons developed for a journalism course is interesting because it has the students evaluate web pages developed with different ends in mind (advocacy, business, informational, news, personal) and includes a evaluation form.

Information Quality on the Internet
This page, from a larger site, gives examples of misleading web addresses (careful--some of these sites are pornographic), web hoaxes, etc.