The Internet offers students and educators an excellent tool for research and interactive learning. There is an essentially limitless amount of information that is available via the net. Many different search engines are available to be used to find information that is online. The major drawback to searching the net is that much time is needed to sort through the wide array of sites returned for each search, since many returned URLs are unrelated to the subject. To help you out at this end many search engines will rate the sites returned. The best sites will be listed first. The key to finding the information that you desire is to choose descriptive key words to search on. Some search engines will report only sites that the key words matched in the web page title, others will match on key words throughout the entire web page.
The first topic that I wanted to research was endangered animals, specifically the manatee. The key words that I used for my search were: Endangered Animals Manatee, with a match on all words option selected. The first search engine that I utilized was AltaVista. This search engine returned 100,000 sites to sift through. Needless to say not all the sites were of value, and I did not review every site returned. The second search engine that I utilized was Excite. The key words that I used for my search were: Endangered Animals Manatee, with a match on all words option selected. This search engine returned 388,654 sites. Many of the returned sites were duplicates of the sites returned by AltaVista. There were also duplicate sites returned by the Excite search engine. . The sites that I chose as valuable returned material students could utilize in researching for information about Manatees. They were also a good reference for educators to get related teaching materials, and also ideas to create their own classroom web pages. I was impressed with the sites that were done by the elementary school children. I think these sites are especially valuable, as models for schools that plan to produce their own web pages. There were numerous sites returned that were not useful. Many of these sites were referring to businesses of Manatee County Florida. The AltaVista engine returned these sites with a high ranking. This is due to the fact that many business and local government sites use the word manatee frequently throughout their pages.
The second topic that I wanted to search on was tornadoes, the weather phenomena. The key word that I used for my search was: tornado, with a match on all words option selected. The first search engine that I utilized was InfoSeek. This search engine returned 29,581 sites, much less than my previous search topic, but still quite an unmanageable number of sites returned. The second search engine that I utilized was Excite. The key word that I used for my search was: tornado, with a match on all words option selected. This search engine returned 30,969 sites. The informative sites that I have listed would be useful for learning facts such as how and why tornadoes form and tornado safety. One of the sites listed is a photo gallery of tornado related pictures. The inappropriate sites returned were mostly of business advertisements of products that contain the word tornado. There were also a number of amateur tornado enthusiasts web pages that were interesting.
The internet can be a useful tool for researching topics. Choosing a search engine will be a matter of personal taste. I utilized three different search engines to complete my site assessment. Each of these search engines had a similar interface. They each performed the searches to similar outcomes. Personal preference will dictate which search engine an internet surfer will utilize. The key to any search engine will be to enter the most descriptive search keywords possible. This will reduce the number of returned links and list the most valuable sites that the user want to look at. Additionally, educators and students alike will need to remember that the internet is an additional tool to supplement the classroom environment. It is important to know the publisher of the site. Just because its on the internet does not mean it is correct.