Learning activity design exercise on Internet search for octel.alt.ac.uk

1. Octel: simple searching
Imogen Bertin
This is an adaptation of part of a talk I do about search for the
http://octel.alt.ac.uk MOOC on Technology Enhanced Learning using the
Absorb/Do/Connect model of learning activity design and is intended to take you
15-20 minutes to complete.

2. The science bit: how Google works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs

3. What do Google results mean?
The actual URL or
web address is in
green. Reading the
end of the domain
(eg .ie or .edu) can
give useful info
The blue text is
whatever the web
designer entered as
the page title plus
here the file type
pdf
The black text is
called the “snippet”
and is taken from
the body of the
page
You can choose
what type of result
eg pictures (images)
For scholarly documents you can see
how many other people referenced it

4. Google advanced search
• Does exactly what it says on the tin…
http://www.google.ie/advanced_search
• If you want to find Ann followed by Brown and not all the
Anns and all the Browns, put the search term in speech marks
“Ann Brown”

5. This one is really useful. It allows you to search within a specific site. Excellent
for public bodies with useless websites and hopeless search features when you
cannot find that vital form…
To exclude a word put – before it eg Shark –attack in the query box
To include words with similar meanings put a tilde ~ before it eg ~food
If you want to use the function “or” (ie you don’t want pages with both search
terms on) then it has to be in upper case eg swallow OR martin otherwise
Google will ignore it. It may also ignore words like “and” or “in”

6. Your turn!
• Go to www.google.ie and try searching for reports about the
elderly in Ireland that use another word for elderly. So look
for words ‘like’ elderly but not including elderly…
• Now we’re going to look at how your previous search history
affects what results Google shows you… please search on
Google for:
David Cameron Syria chemical weapons
• Write down the first ten words of the snippet (the black text)
for the top Google result you see
• Now go to http://PollEV.com and enter this number: 354309
followed by the ten words you wrote down.
• View your ten words, and those that others got, at
http://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/Di30yJ5GVn
TokgP

7. Different results… what’s going on…?
• Your Google results are personalised based on your search
history. Different people see different website links.
• They wouldn’t be that different if you were all using recently-
restarted computers in a college lab with the same Internet
address.
• Google personalisation is a lot more complicated than
Cookies, but understanding Cookies is a good starting point…
• Before next week’s session, check out this web page:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5047612_disadvantages-
cookies-computer.html
• Think about your own Internet experiences… use the [class
forum] or twitter with hashtag #imooctel to mention one
good or bad aspect of cookies or personalised search results
that you have personally experienced.
We’ll discuss these at the start of the next session.

8. What Google and facebook hide…
• Further watching: Eli
Pariserhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzZzf6PoyC4