Online+Search+Activity

**What are online search skills?[[image:http://asiasociety.org/files/china-technology.png width="320" height="240" align="right"]] **
Students should be able to use strategies to conduct an online search. Students should also be able to identify components of a URL and navigate to appropriate web pages.

**Why is it important to develop online skills? **
The Internet provides new opportunities for students and adults alike to apply their literacy skills in ever-expanding virtual learning, professional, and social spaces. According to Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, and Cammack (2004), students in the 21st will have to develop the “skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuously emerge in our world and influence all areas of our personal and professional lives” (p. 1572). In other words, successful global citizens must be able to communicate information and ideas, search for solutions and effectively use a variety of media and formats found on the web.

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**Searching for information **
This activity will focus on part of a strategy for finding information online developed by Don Leu and his team at University of Connecticut. The strategy is call the [|Taxonomy of Internet Reading Comprehension Skills and Strategies] More information on their work is available at [].

This Internet reading strategy involves five overall steps.


 * 1) Question - Identify a question or define a problem
 * 2) Locate - Use the Internet to locate an information resource
 * 3) Evaluate - general statements or actions about critically evaluating information
 * 4) Synthesizing - integrating information from multiple resources
 * 5) Other strategies - strategies outside the theoretical framework

We are going to focus on the second part of this process - Locating information online. (From The New Literacies Team at University of Connecticut under the direction of Don Leu online at [] and //[|http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/iesproject/d...Skills.pdf]//

Search: Methods and strategies for searching for information on the Internet

 * Engine: Using a search engine to locate an information resource (includes strategies or reasons for choosing a search engine)
 * Other: using other methods (not search engine) to locate an information resource (i.e. typing in specific webpage, searching from Address bar of browser, etc.)

Key Words: Key word entry strategies; enters a key word or words to search in a search engine

 * Spelling: Strategies for obtaining the correct spelling of keywords

Reading results: Strategies for reading and selecting an information source on a page of search engine results

 * Click and Look: Action based on proceeding systematically through search engine results (i.e. begin with first link and progress listwise one link after another)
 * URL reading: Action based on specific reading of URL (i.e. identifying certain elements of URL such as .com, .edu, .gov, etc.)
 * Description reading: Action based on specific reading of search results (i.e. identifies bolded words from keyword input, related words, etc.)
 * Touring results page: Action based on scrolling through results page prior to close reading or change of keywords (i.e. a virtual text walk)

Webpage Reading: Reading a single webpage to locate information or decide where to go next (not reading search engine results)

 * Text Walk: Actions based on quick review of webpage (similar to touring of results page above) prior to close reading
 * Summarize: Verbal summarization of information during webpage reading
 * Design elements:Reading of visual features and attributes of webpage to target information (i.e. menu options, links, headings, images, etc.)


 * All the above material is from The New Literacies Team at University of Connecticut under the direction of Don Leu online at [] and //[|http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/iesproject/d...Skills.pdf] //

Our activity

 * 1) In groups conduct a search on "Nagoya Protocol," or some other topic of interest to you, using four different search engines: 1) [|Baidu], 2) [|Sohu], 3) [|Yahoo], and 4) [|Youdao]
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Use the process for locating information outlined above from the New Literacies Research Team at the University of Connecticut.
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Compare and contrast content findings with members of your group.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Share with your group, which engine would you use and why?

**<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">References: **
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Coiro, J. (2003, February). Reading comprehension on the Internet: Expanding our understanding of reading comprehension to encompass new literacies. //The Reading Teacher, 56//(6), 458-464.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Leu, D.J., Jr., Kinzer, C.K., Coiro, J., & Cammack, D.W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the Internet and other information and communication technologies. In R.B. Ruddell & N. Unrau (Eds.),//Theoretical models and processes of reading// (1570–1613). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Leu, D. J., O’Byrne, W. I., Zawilinski, L., McVerry, J. G., & Everett-Cacopardo, H. (2009). Comments on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes: Expanding the new literacies conversation. //Educational Researcher 38//(4), 264-269

**<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Image Copyright information: **
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">http://asiasociety.org/education-learning/learning-world/how-china-preparing-its-youth-future