Information Literacy for a Global Community

Throughout your sixth grade year and your time at Sanborn, you will be using the Internet.

We'll learn more about the Internet during our classes by doing some of these activities:

• Go to the Wayback Machine and see Sanborn, Apple's and Microsoft's first websites. Click here to use the Wayback machine for your own research.

• Click here to visit my Moodle on Information Literacy. Use the "Login as a Guest" option.

• Click here to download the Search Log and track search results using different search engines. What can you find out about whether Henry David Thoreau knew President Lincoln?
  
  
• Click here to add to our Google Map on places we've visited.
  
  
• Try the Teoma search engine: www.teoma.com. Use the search term "Concord abolitionists" or "global warming". First try it with quotations, then without. Do your results change?
  
  
• Review Internet and Computer Terms.
  
  
• Visit the Altavista search engine and use these Bolean operators: and, or and not, to find out about Asisan elephants in Tennesee.
  
  
• Go to www.easywhois.com and find out who owns www.harrypotter.com. Find the owner of another site.
  
  
• Use the extension flipchart to show your knowledge of Domain Name extensions like .com or .edu. Download a flipchart viewer if you don't have ActivStudio.
  
  
• User your knowledge of extensions to find out how many non-profits have pages about elephants. Go to Altavista type “host:org + elephant". Try the host command for at least one other search.
  
  
• Do an external link search at Altavista. Find out how many sites link to to the the Old North Bridge website at http://www.nps.gov/mima/. Try the link command technique with at least one other site.
  
  
• Go to Overture: www.overture.com, and do a search on keyword. Once your search is complete, look for Max Bids in the top right corner
  
  
• Realize that the top sites you find in Google aren't at the top because of quality, they are at the top because of popularity. Visit Google's webmaster tools to see some of the free ways website creators can make their pages more popular.
  
  
• More activities: Website validation, How to Read a Web Address, The Wayback Machine

Whenever you are on the Internet, practice important netiquette stay safe.
We'll look at some iSafe resources and review an Internet Safety Contract in class.