How to Find What Your Looking For in Under an Hour

Day 3 of history class began the way you might expect a Saturday night to start out- 6 teenagers sitting around a TV, all on their cellphones and iPads.  But instead of scrolling through our twitter feeds or checking up on the latest magcon viners, we used all this technology to learn about online research and responsibility.

First we started off with a site sponsored by google, called A Google A Day. The way it works is you get asked a question, and then you have to use a google search engine to find the answer. Easy, right? Wrong. The questions being asked were things like, “An 11-foot bird lives less than two miles from 30.891383,-102.885032. What's his name?” Simply typing that into the search engine would get you nowhere. Instead we had to think up different ways to search, like going on google maps and finding the location provided, or looking up what kind of bird is 11 feet tall. Competing with our classmates to see who could find all the answers first felt like a treasure hunt- each type of search held different clues, each one leading us closer or further from the answer. Although it could get frustrating trying from all different angles, and still being empty handed after 15 minutes, A Google A Day taught us all a lot about researching. You don’t always find things on the first try, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find the information you are looking for. Searching key ideas and words can lead you closer to information, and with enough time spent and creative ideas; you will find what you are looking for.



"Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Site",
http://www.uft.org/linking-learning/octopus-paxarbolis-developing-information-literacy

Once you do find a site or article that appears to house the information you want, you first need to ask a few questions- How accurate, reliable, and authentic is this site and information? For a site to be all of these it must be what it says it is, come from  a person who is trusted and has the necessary qualifications for the information they are publishing to be valid (ie. a degree in that field), and it must be recently updated to ensure that the information is up to date. Sometimes a site may appear to be all of these things, but in reality is the opposite. One example of this is the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus website. Of course a tree octopus isn’t a real animal; the name is practically an oxymoron! But the website looks so real that teachers often use it to test their students on their research skills, and ability to judge a website. Take a closer look and you’ll realize that it’s all a hoax. Just by googling the author, Lyle Zapato, information stating that the site is a joke pops up. Next look at the site url, it doesn’t end in edu, for education, or org, for organization, but instead net, which stands for network. This shows that the site is not made for educational purposes, so it’s not wise to cite it as a source of accurate information.

After an hour of class time spent scouring the internet for hidden answers to tricky questions, and coming to the realization that websites aren’t always what they seem to be, class came to a close. What started out as a group of teenagers sitting around a TV on their iPhones, had turned into a well-educated group of young adults, now possessing the knowledge to research anything online, better prepared and more efficient than an hour earlier.