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4 hours

04.4 Course Project Search and Annotated Search History

My Search

Ready for a deep dive of your own? In this activity you will gain further experience using essential search tips to find information you need to develop your Project. If you need to review or print out the tips, you may access them in Practice Search (course activity 03.1).

Currently, your Project consists of a Problem Statement, from which a list of Key Search Terms and what you Need to Know may be derived. Use these to keep on track as you search. While clicking away from site to site and document to document on the web, it is easy to lose sight of the journey taken. Starting with this exercise and continuing throughout this course, you will maintain a record of your searches so you may review and learn from them. Expert searchers learn a lot from looking back and analyzing their own Search Histories, identifying patterns in the winding and often unpredictable paths taken.

There are several ways to build a practical Search History. You may prefer to keep a log of your search by hand or on a word processor, as you have done thus far in the course. A more convenient method may be to store your search findings on Furl, a free online service that allows users to store and manage annotated web links. With Furl you can save and access your work from ANY computer.

How to create and use a Furl Account (recommended)

green traffic light Complete and save a Search History as you did for the previous Practice Searches.

Search History Tasks--note the last two steps

  1. Use the 21CIF Search Wizard to search for resources pertinent to your Problem Statement / useful for your Project.
  2. Record the query terms and any operators you use in your searches (Here's a wonderful shortcut: the 21CIF Search Wizard displays all the operators and special terms that Google uses to search--just copy and paste these from the bottommost box on the Search Wizard page before hitting "search")
  3. Note any optional features you applied, such as restricting the search to a single domain or language. There are many options available on the Search Wizard.
  4. Keep track of the URLs you explore.
  5. Write brief comments regarding the applicability of each resource to your problem.
  6. Conduct multiple searches using as many of the top ten search tips as necessary.
  7. Continue this process until you find at least three relevant, and in your judgment, reliable web sites applicable to your project.

cartoon speech bubble For this week's discussion, 04.5 Forum, post your reactions to one or more of the following questions/prompts and respond to at least two other participants' postings.