Link Power: Linking the Search Strategy Itself
There are many uses for web links. Another powerful type of linking is to
make a link out of the database search strategy
itself that appears in the web address area when a search is completed (see
picture on the top right). To understand how this works requires a closer examination of the web
address of a database search. This adds to the type of links that were
introduced in prior chapters including links to: personal web pages; to pages at
other web sites; and to any kind of computer file including links to different kinds of media such as
spreadsheets, databases, and audio and video files.
Many online databases, but not all, enable one to reliably copy the web
address of a completed search and include this data in links on existing web
pages. To be "reliable" means that the same database search address will work
the same way every time; some databases generate a unique search address each
time. Google does not, making it a "reliable" search system for such links.
Below is a text copy of what is in the URL box or web address above of a search
of the Google database for the phrase "presidential elections". To see this
work, open Google.com and type in "presidential elections" yourself but be sure
and include the quotation marks. When the results come back, the page also shows
the web address for the search. It will look very much
like what you see below. The part in boldface is Google's interpretation or
expression of the search strategy. Google glues the two words together with the
plus sign.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q="presidential+elections"&btnG=Google+Search
Actual search: Now, click this link to run this example search of the Google database for the phrase
"presidential elections". You should get the same thing you just
got if you typed in "presidential elections" in Google. Note that the quotation
marks are important as they require Google to search for the two terms together,
not each term in different places in the same paragraph or page.
To
create something similar, make a link in the usual way by highlighting some
text, then copy the web address information from the search and paste it into
the link's address box. Clicking
the link at a later hour, week or year will run the same search. As in the
picture to the right, with each
search one can get the number of hits the term generates and note the changes in
the hits at the top of the search list. That is, once the link is clicked, it
uses that information to do the search again. Depending on how quickly the
database is being updated, a new search may find new records that were not
present the last time the search was done. Web search engines update themselves
every couple of weeks. Email conferencing systems such as newsgroups or the SUP
database update themselves continuously. Blog search systems update hourly.
Using the same database search term or search string of characters repeatedly
over a period of time can not only reveal interesting patterns but can provide a
way to organize concepts and research progress. The periods of time might range
from hours to months. These patterns in the databases can indicate many things,
for example: the speed at which new information is emerging in an area; a
comparison of search term usefulness; and an organizational system for
communication threads used by a community of problem solvers.
Web Page Research Links
One type of sort can be done along the lines of which search terms are most
productive, not only in quantity of hits but in quality of those items at the
top of the list. Your web page on a particular topic that you and your students
are studying might include a series of links, each of which runs a search for
which you have noted some search data. It might look like this.
Click each of these links to confirm or disconfirm my findings. Using the
reported results above note which phrase was the most productive. Also note the
explosive growth in the number of hits over the two year period between 2004 and
2006. These numbers also help document the explosive growth of the Internet and
improvements in indexing and searching capacity. The numbers that appear will
increasingly differ from the numbers I reported on those dates so the conclusion
you reach on a later date could be different from the one that could be drawn
from the data above.
You too can set up such links to searches that you have designed, searches
that your students will use later in their own study.
Email Conferencing/Wonder Web Progress
Another type of sort can be done in some communication or email systems.
The point here is that teachers can reveal searches that they want their
students to see and to use for writing responses. They can make them links on
their teacher web pages. Online web pages can provide a
similar service to role that tagboard or poster board is playing with the Wonder
Web on paper that you are working with in your classroom. Further note that the
team links on the Wonder Web do a search for your email address and thereby
return the list of contributions you have made to date.
It is not difficult to look through the online Wonder Web threads of this
course that have emerged
or not emerged and create your own page that provides links which sort out the SUPs and the FAQs that you have created in this course. Nor would it be
difficult to add a student's question from the Wonder Webs of your classroom, and then create a web
page link to it so that it can be made even more visible to others. When placing
student questions from your classroom in a public forum, use your name and email address as the
source of the email, but put student initials or a made up nickname in
parentheses at the end of the question.
By copying the web address of a particular question in the SUP database, one
can create a list of questions for which there are no responses (SUP) and
a list of responses (FAQ). This is the purpose of the table in the file in your
web account space called notebooktable.html, for your WonderWeb work to be
sorted into SUP and FAQ sets.
Click the links
below to see a quick
view and a sort of two questions from the Wonder Web effort from one course
participant:
Elizabeth Kartiganer's Wonder Web Writing
SUP
Chapter 3 Posting: I am intrigued and skeptical about the group
writing software. When I think about the effort it sometimes takes to get
elementary kids to write at all I wonder if there is a place for group writing
in the elementary classroom. I suspect I lack imagination.
Help me on this if you have some ideas!? by
Elizabeth Kartiganer. No response as of Feb. 1.
FAQ
Chapter two Posting:
What do all of you think about kids endlessly playing video games? What do you
think is the educational value of nintendo, play station etc etc.? Or do you
think it is a total waste of time? by Elizabeth
Kartiganer, 2 responses as of January 26.
The above links help document and organize the current status of the
wondering that Elizabeth has generated. Further study of the SUP threads allows
educators to analyze how effectively readers are becoming in integrating what
they are learning in responding to others. Do the responders just give their
opinion out of their own experience? Or do those who reply give any indication
that they done any hunter-gathering? Do they indicate that they have used
information that has been taught to search other databases and other information
systems to find deeper levels of information that would contribute to the
question? Take a look at the contributions to your own questions in the Wonder
Web and see how the more recent comments are supported by reference to the
thinking of others.
To further model possibilities here, I will do some "out loud" thinking in
this paragraph. As the first question
is unanswered, it might serve as the basis for an action research project by the
person who posed the question or by anyone looking for an undergraduate or
graduate research project. The
second question strongly
suggests doing a search of the many book and article databases (e.g.,
barnesandnoble.com
or ERIC) and mentioning the search effort and the citation for a relevant
article that digs more deeply in a later Post Reply. What might this mean? For example,
a quick search of
barnesandnoble.com for "video games" from the middle level of the
information pyramid shows several relevant books, including James Gee's book on
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning
and Literacy. Type video games into ERIC
for a quick search and over 200 articles are listed that have been written
and indexed in this fine educational literature database. But note that this
link to ERIC only goes to the web site, it does not automatically carry out the
search as with our previous examples. Searching for video games will have to be
done manually.
Using a Post Reply to
report such finds moves the asker of the question one step closer to answers.
Here is an example of a part of a completed WonderWeb HOTS analysis table for
the online notebook page. Click anywhere in the table below to see the actual
page from which this is taken to click and explore the links. Do you agree with
her classifications of her questions?
Feel free to contribute to any of her SUPs!
These ideas and demonstrations show that the
databases of the Web have many uses that contribute to the questions of each
other. Sharing questions, researching answers, and reporting results for
personal projects or for work teams, all can and are being done through
databases.
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4/1/2006 | Page
author: Houghton