Web search for Middle School students: choose right keywords for an adequate web site retrieval

http://searchenginewatch.com

Educators don't have a problem to describe  keywords as significant words or phrases that identify the topic of a research. We teach students to put keywords in a search bar of a search engine, catalog or a database. However, Middle School students often complain that they have too many results and it's hard to find adequate articles. Librarians provide young adults with more specific recommendations to help them find relevant information.

Librarians suggest:

• Before conducting a research, students make a list of questions they try to answer and collect information for. Examine these questions and identify keywords.
• Relevancy of retrieved web sites depends on what words students have inserted in the search bar and in what order. A keyword headache brings different searches from the results produced by the phrase my head hearts. A keyword dentist retrieves distinct results from those that come as a result for a search for a tooth doctor .
•  Before they start research, students should think either they need facts or opinion and either they need to provide a variety of points of view. 
•  Are they collecting statistics, lesson plans, discussions?
•  Remind the students how search engines work: Web pages are tagged and described in metadata to make them searchable by search engines. If the words chosen by a researcher don't bring helpful web sites, we suggest that students use synonyms and related words .
• General keywords bring a great number of web sites while focused keywords will limit the number of websites, sometimes more than it is desired. Special terminology  retrieves highly professional articles.Using both types of keywords in the search bar is the best way to find relevant information.
•   It is recommended to use 5-7 keywords in the search session. Google brings web sites that contain the most of the keywords entered. 

Hopefully, these tips will help your Middle School students find relevant information and grow as web detectives.

School Library Media Programs - What are they?

Can you list at least three of the purposes of school library programs?

An old image of the hushing librarian is fading away. Librarians don't circumscribe themselves with printed formats and brick walls any longer. They plow the cyberspace and dig with the web tools. Training students to use the Internet effectively and participate in social network communication safely is their priority. Avatars represent them online; wikis and Second Life are the islands designated for their professional gatherings. Librarians collaborate with teachers, educate kids to research, they recommend materials for projects and classes, attract teachers to available and appropriate web tools and provide training for their use... We change our hats according to your needs and requests!

This school year we started introducing ourselves and our programs to the Board. Now we would like to finish the year with presenting the results of our work and describing important activities to our loyal audience.

Do you think it's unnecessary? Everyone sees us daily in various places interacting with teachers, students, parents, and the administration; hears us talking about information, values of reading, and ways to retrieve information; observes us looking for books and rearranging book shelves; recognizes when we support the curriculum. We advise, advertise, and invite to experiment with technology; entertain, take pictures and videos, smile, and just howdy. Programs and activities run during the year reflect the diverse roles of the School Library Media Specialists.

Read about other activities in our annual report and take a quiz (this multiple choice is the way to summarize what school library media programs are about).

Looking forward to seeing you in August, to collaborating on new units, integrating Looking forward to seeing you in August, to collaborating on new units, integrating technology into education, and educating our students to become 21st century learners.