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Teacher's Guide: Personalized Evaluation Searches

To illustrate how personalized search engines can be used as a platform for evaluation, we created a series of Evaluation Challenges. Several assignments are provided that involve students in searching for and evaluating the credibility of the information they find. The final section describes how we created this activity.

Animal fact or fiction?

From the table below, select a question for your students to research. Direct them to search for answers using any of the personalized search engines listed; each of these personalized search engines use the same sites, which we pre-selected for this activity. Note that, at each grade division, there are two searches: only one of which is credible. Choose one or both to challenge your students' evaluation skills.

	Using only the sites in this Searchroll, have students locate and evaluate the information found in the table below. Activities are grouped by suggested grade levels and subject matters and may be adapted. Evaluation Challenge using Rollyo Searchroll
	Using only the sites in this Swicki, have students locate and evaluate the information found in the table below. Activities are grouped by suggested grade levels and subject matters and may be adapted. The same Evaluation Challenge using the Swicki tool.
	Using only the sites in this Google Coop Custom Search Engine, have students locate and evaluate the information found in the table below. Activities are grouped by suggested grade levels and subject matters and may be adapted. The same Evaluation Challenge using Google's tool.

Each activity involves numerous search/evaluation tasks:

• turning a question into a query -- using effective search terms and finding better terms while searching;

• reading carefully -- avoiding the misleading information that is likely to be retrieved in this Searchroll;

• deciding whether information that answers Question #1 is trustworthy or not, which often requires additional searching.

At all levels, involve students in discussing the credibility of the information they locate. Mix it up: don't tell them whether their topic has credible evidence or whether it is questionable. (Rather than say that information is not credible, we have indicated only that the information is questionable.) Provide an excellent learning opportunity by leaving the decision about credibility up to your class:

• How do you know if the source of the information can be trusted? (this could include insights about the author, publisher, accuracy, bias, evidence, agreement among sites)

• Based on the discussion, should you accept this information as true? Did you change your mind as a result of the discussion? If so, why?

How we created our personalized search engines

1. We started by searching on Google to find interesting reports about animals that might not be true. Three of the queries we used were: ANIMAL FUN, ANIMAL NEWS, ANIMAL HOAX. These produced many interesting results, from which we gleaned the topics for the assignments. The initial search took about an hour.

2. Once we had selected the topics, we googled each principal keyword (e.g., skyfish) to find a collection of sites with relevant information. We tried to avoid sites that might contain questionable content by searching our targets for terms a school might block. We weren't able to screen out every possible objectionable term--four-letter words can be found on university pages, etc. We initially built this series of lessons on Rollyo includes ads (although school filters will block access to the objectionable ones). With Rollyo, there's a limit of 25 sites per Searchroll. The Searchroll we created spans five topics that encompass as many as 20 sites, so it may be more extensive than a Searchroll you create. This step took about an hour as well.

3. Next we tested various queries using only our Rollyo Searchroll to see what kinds of results students would retrieve. This helped us refine the wording of the assignments. This took a couple of hours for all the assignments. If you are developing a Searchroll for only one assignment, it will take less time.

4. Finally we added Google's Custom Search Engine and Eurekster's Swicki to the mix. Each of these systems provide for ad screening. The Google tool, can be made to focus on a single page or subdirectory. This provides you with a finer grain of choices.