1. Eastern Mediterranean University
ITEC106
Lecture V

2. Locating Information on the Internet

3. LOCATING EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET
The information students need and use to complete project-based learning activities can come from a number of sources, including personal experiences, books, articles, expert opinions, encyclopaedias, and the World Wide Web.
One of the greatest features of the Internet is that it offers students relatively inexpensive access to a wealth of information across a vast range of fields, which can increase students efficiency in searching for information.
Indeed, information searches are the most basic function of Web use.

4. Virtual Libraries and Digital Image Collections
A virtual library is designed to extend or simulate in a virtual space many of the services and capabilities of brick-and-mortar libraries.
Usually managed by libraries and librarians, these virtual libraries identify electronic resources referred and reviewed by professionals, particularly librarians.
Although copyright and subscription issues may limit the capability of virtual libraries to provide references to scholarly articles and books, newspaper articles, and professional magazine pieces, many of these resources can be acquired by academic or fee-based library or subscription services.

5. Virtual Libraries and Digital Image Collections...
A digital library, digital collection, or digital image collection uses electronic information technologies to digitize primary source documents, assemble them into collections, and present them online.
The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services.
The DLF promotes sustainable, scalable digital collections and encourages the development of new collections and collection services.

6. Professional and Standards-Oriented Organizations
Professional and standards-oriented organizations publish curriculum standards, teaching resources, and lesson plans on the Web.
The following professional organizations cover almost all of the national curriculum standards in various subject areas:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM;
National Council for the Social Studies (
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE;
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS;
National Geographic Society ( )
National Council on Economic Education (NCEE;

7. Government Resources
Federal and state government departments and agencies publish a considerable amount of information on the Internet. Most online government publications, books, articles, statistics, and releases are authored by specialists and scholars and are closely reviewed by field experts.
In general, teachers can encourage students to utilize electronic government resources with little concern over quality or authorship.
Most of these resources are available at no charge and without subscription requirements.
The information available at specific departments or agencies is probably the most useful information resource for students.

8. Regional Technology in Education Consortia
Regional Technology in Education Consortia (R*TECs) help states, schools, teachers, school library and media personnel, school administrators, and other education personnel and entities successfully integrate technologies into K–12 classrooms, library media centers, and other educational settings, including adult literacy centers.
The Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education funds 10 R*TECs ( to establish and conduct regional activities that address professional development, technical assistance, and information resource dissemination to promote the effective use of technology in education.

9. Encyclopaedias
Online encyclopaedias are a good place to begin research on a topic that may be unfamiliar to a student, especially a younger student.
Some useful online encyclopaedias include the following:
Encyclopedia.com (
Encyclopedia Britannica (
Encarta (
Encyclopedia Smithsonian (
Information Please ( )

10. Educational Content Sites
Educational content sites on the Internet can provide high-quality content for use in lesson building, primarily lesson plans and curriculum resources.
Some of the most popular Internet content sites include the following:
Blue Web’n (
DiscoverySchool.com Lesson Plans Library (
Education World (
Educator’s Reference Desk Lesson Plans ( index.shtml)
....

11. Electronic and Online Journals
Electronic journals include journals,magazines, e-zines or webzines,newsletters, and any other type of serial publication that is available on the World Wide Web.
There are many electronic journals currently available, and new ones are always being added, so it is best to use a directory to locate electronic journals in a particular field.
Many different libraries, consortia, and organizations have developed lists and guides.
Some of the better and more comprehensive sites with directories of electronic journals are listed here:
Electronic Journal Miner (
New Jour:Electronic Journals & Newsletters (
.....

12. Searchable Databases
Searchable databases are useful for organizing large amounts of disparate information; most search engines like Google contain searchable databases.
For many of these databases the search results are dynamically generated and then virtually delivered in Web pages associated with a specific search.
Such pages are not stored anywhere because it is easier and cheaper to generate the answer page for each query than to store all the possible pages containing all the possible answers to all the possible queries.
Web content in the course of routine searching in most Web directories:
Direct Search (
....

13. USING COMMERCIAL SEARCH ENGINES
Commercial search engines are usually employed to support project-based learning activities.
To perform productive searches, teachers and students should be skilled in using search engines effectively.
Search engines are most useful when you first begin a research task.
The main rule to remember is that it is important to be specific because of the vast quantity of information available.
You usually go through several trials to refine your search for more specific and appropriate information.

14. Types of Search Engines
Search engines have a variety of ways to refine and control searches.
Some use menu systems, whereas others require special commands as part of the query; some use a combination of approaches.
Some search engines provide filtering settings to control searches; children’s search engines can filter results and/or search criteria.
There are numerous Internet search engines and various ways in which they perform searches, it is important to understand how they work.

15. Search Directories
Search directories are hierarchical databases with references to websites.
The websites that are included are handpicked by real people and classified according to the rules of that particular search service.
Yahoo! is an example of a search directory. Directories are useful when you have only a general idea about how to search.
The first page normally gives you the most general categories, and then you click down through the hierarchy to the appropriate category and select a website.

16. Search Engines
Search engines use programs that crawl, or spider, the Web. The spider visits a Web page, reads the information in it, and then follows links to other pages within that site.
The spider returns to each website periodically to look for changes.
Everything the spider finds goes into a catalog, or index.
Much like the index of a book, the search index contains a reference to every Web page the spider finds.
If a Web page changes, the index is updated with new information.

17. Hybrid Search Engines
Hybrid search engines use both crawler-based results and human-powered listings.
The distinction between search engines and search directories is not always clear because all the major search directories provide results from a search engine if they cannot find the subject in their own directory.
For example, Yahoo! uses the search engine Google for this purpose.
Hybrid search engines may provide information from search directories before data from the search engine’s database and may even favour one type of listing over another.
For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings although it also presents crawler-based results.

18. Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines search several search engines and directories at the same time and extract the most relevant hits, or results, from all of them.
Metasearch engines are useful for gaining a general understanding of what information is available on a topic.
Examples of metasearch engines are Vivisimo ( and Ixquick (
Sherlock is a metasearch engine on Macintosh.
For complex searches you should use the relevant search engine because metasearch engines provide only a small number of the results from each individual search engine.

19. Searches with Google
Google ( is a widely used search engine that provides dependable search results and will be used for many of the examples in your textbook.
Google ranks Web pages based on algorithms that examine the entire link structure of the Web and determine the importance of a Web page based on which other Web pages link to it and how often.
Google then determines which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted.

20. Publishing Information on the Internet

21. WEB PAGE EDITORS
Web page editors are the most common approach to developing and publishing Web pages.
These products are like a word processor for Web pages.
Examples: FrontPage and Macromedia DreamWeaver.
Text-editing programs are often used to edit Web pages. For example, if you use the editing function of a Web browser to edit a Web page, it may default to a text-editing program on your computer.
The Mozilla Suite provides an open-source solution for editing Web pages; it includes the Mozilla browser, an program, and an HTML editing program called Mozilla Composer.

22. WORD PROCESSING AND SPREADSHEET PROGRAMS
Word processing documents can be created in their original format—for example, as a DOC file using Microsoft Word—and then published to the Web in HTML.
Word includes features that allow documents to be saved as HTML, which others can access using a Web browser.
The text formatting included in a Word document usually translates easily into HTML.
Once a Word document is saved and published as a Web page, the HTML file can be edited using Web page authoring programs, such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver.

23. WORD PROCESSING AND SPREADSHEET PROGRAMS...
Like word processing applications, spreadsheet applications usually include features that allow documents to be saved as HTML.
For example, Microsoft Excel provides features to save a spreadsheet or part of one as a Web page that others can access using a Web browser.
Excel also allows a spreadsheet document to be saved in either interactive or noninteractive form.
Once an Excel document is saved and published as a Web page, the HTML file can be edited using Web page authoring programs, such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver.

24. MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION PROGRAMS
Multimedia presentation files, such as those created with Microsoft PowerPoint, can also be saved as Web pages.
PowerPoint provides a simple way to create Web pages from one or more slides in a presentation.
However, unlike word processing or spreadsheet documents, presentation documents are published as multiple Web pages, with a single Web page corresponding to a single slide in the presentation document.
But PowerPoint automatically links multiple Web pages and builds navigation mechanisms into the pages to permit the Web surfer to move sequentially through the presentation.

25. CREATING ONLINE LEARNING ACTIVITIES WITH FILAMENTALITY
Teachers most often create Web pages to present
(a) information with links to relevant websites,
(b) exercises and student assignments to support classroom learning activities, and
(c) project solutions or findings.
One easy-to-use publishing tool called filamentality allows teachers who do not know anything about HTML, Web pages,or Web servers to develop online learning activities.
Filamentality is an interactive website that allows teachers to create Webbased learning activities through a fill-in-the-blank process; it combines the “filaments” of the Web with a learner’s “mentality.”

26. CREATING ONLINE LEARNING ACTIVITIES WITH FILAMENTALITY
Filamentality ( ) helps design, develop, and publish five types of Web documents, called activity formats:
hotlist
multimedia scrapbook
subject sampler
treasure hunt
WebQuest
Subject samplers, treasure hunts, and WebQuests work best online, but hotlists and multimedia scrapbooks can be used effectively as either an off-line OR an online activity.

27. Assembling Information – Hotlist
A hotlist is a list of websites that a teacher finds useful for completing one or more specific learning activities.
Creating a hotlist can spare students a lot of time in aimless searching.
The links in a hotlist can be developed as a paper list of locations on the Web, an electronic file (such as a word processing document), bookmarks in the Web browser, or a Web page created by a Web page authoring program or Filamentality.
When a hotlist is published as a Web page, the collection of links is available to everyone in the classroom and on the Internet.
When teachers want students themselves to search and evaluate websites as part of the learning process, hotlists can be a useful tool for students to publish their findings.

28. Multimedia Scrapbooks
A multimedia scrapbook is used with a subject or a topic of which students already have a general understanding from classroom instruction and/or textbooks.
Multimedia scrapbooks are useful as a beginning activity for exploring the Web and collecting and publishing information located on the Internet.
With multimedia scrapbooks students surf a collection of Internet sites organized around specific categories, such as photographs, maps, stories, facts, quotations, sound clips, videos, or virtual reality tours.
Students collect important items by downloading or copying and pasting them into a newsletter, presentation program, word processing document, or Web page.

29. Achieving Learning – Treasure Hunts
Like multimedia scrapbooks treasure hunts are useful learning activities for generating knowledge on a subject or a topic.
However, multimedia scrapbooks support generative or exploratory learning, whereas treasure hunts are more structured and use a problem solving approach.
The basic strategy of treasure hunts is to find Web pages that contain multimedia information—text, graphics, audio, and video—that contributes to a basic understanding of a topic.

30. Subject Samplers
A subject sampler presents a small number of websites organized around a main topic and offering something interesting to do, read, or see.
Students are asked to respond to the Web-based activities from a personal perspective and participate in a community of learners relating to the topic.
Subject samplers are useful for connecting students to a topic and developing an awareness or understanding of its importance or relevance.

31. WebQuests
A WebQuest presents teams of students with a challenging task, scenario, or problem connected to a current event or a controversial social or environmental concern.
Students explore a wide variety of Web resources to make sense of the issue.
With a WebQuest all students begin by learning some common background knowledge and then divide into groups in which each student or pair of students takes on a particular role, task, or perspective.

32. Using Multimedia Files
Creating multimedia products or adding multimedia elements to a Web page or a Web log usually involves the creation of specialized multimedia files, which provide graphics, audio, or video effects.
Several multimedia file formats are commonly used, and special authoring or development tools or programs are required to create these files.

33. Graphics and Images
Written and oral communication can be enhanced by photographs, illustrations, maps, charts, and other graphics.
Sources for graphics include digital cameras, scanners,and painting programs.
Although graphics can be saved in many different file formats, three are typically used on the Web: graphics interchange format (GIF), joint photographic experts group (JPEG), and portable network graphics (PNG).

34. Animation Animation is a useful tool for showing processes.
A series of drawings or photographs can be turned into an animation and added to a Web page.
Animations work by creating a series of images, with each one in the sequence showing the next step in the motion being depicted.
These separate images can be transformed into an animated GIF using any number of inexpensive graphic programs.
The file extension for animated GIFs is also .gif.
Macromedia Flash is a program commonly used to create animations for the Web.

35. Audio
Even though audio files can be a powerful enhancement to a Web page or a slide presentation, poor-quality audio effects can also detract.
Audio files should complement a multimedia presentation and should always be able to be turned off.
It is relatively simple to create digital voice recordings using programs that come with the computer.
Digital audio files are usually saved as .au, .wav, or .aif files, depending on the capability of their sound editing program.
Sound files containing music are often saved as MIDI files and can be used as background music in a Web-based multimedia project.

36. Digital Video
Digital video, or desktop movies, can add effects to multimedia presentations and Web pages that are motivating and engage students in learning.
Movies can also incorporate still pictures, artwork, text, and audio.
And they can be created and edited in a wide variety of software applications, ranging from the professional to simple programs suitable for elementary students.
File formats for video include .mov (used by QuickTime), .avi (Audio Visual Interleave), and .mpg (Motion Picture Experts Group).

37. Portable Document Format
Portable document format, or PDF, is a file format that captures all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that can be viewed, navigated, printed, and easily transferred from one computer to another.
PDF files are created using Adobe Acrobat, Acrobat Capture, or similar products, but many word processing and layout programs have the capacity to save information as a PDF file.
PDF files ensure that Web pages will display text and graphic information exactly as it was created.
To display a PDF, a Web page links to the PDF file, and the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in displays the PDF in the browser.