Searching for Information on the Web: A Primer for Teachers

Dr Achuthsankar S. Nair Director, C-DIT, Govt. of Kerala Internet is a unbelievably huge source of information on almost any topic you can think of, good and bad. It is said that if you print out all the information available on the internet and pile up the papers, it will be almost 400 Km tall ! Searching for the specific information you need from this ocean of information is really an art and teachers will find it useful to note some tips given here on academic searching. You do not have any great computer skill to use the internet. If you want to use it on your own, you need basic mouse skills and a few hours hand-holding from anyone who knows to use a PC. If you, for any reason, do not want to use the computer on your own, you can still make use of the internet by giving proper directions to your friend/student/family member who is willing to help. In a nut shell, here is what you need to know about the internet: It offers a huge number of documents. Each source is identified by a web site address which is similar in function to a channel number in a cable TV network. Here is a typical address: www.psychology.com You need to either know a useful adress in your subject area (which you saw referred in a text book/told to you by your friend) or you need to know an address of a special web site which helps to locate information. They are known as search engines and are similar in function to a Library catalogue. Here is the one I recommend: www.google.com To start work on the internet, you must get access to a PC that is connected on the internet already. Look at the screen and find the following picture (icon): This is the icon for a software used to view the information on the internet. It is called browser (Internet Explorer)

Move the mouse so that the cursor comes over the above picture. Then click the left mouse
button. You will see the background of the picture darkening. Now press the Enter Key in the keyboard and the browser will start up. . Type the word www.google.com as indicated in the following picture and press Enter key. (It is likely that the browser will be set to start off with some web page, known as its home page. You can stop that by pressing the stop button

You can now type the word indicating the topic of your interest (search keyword) in the long rectangular slot area and click on the button Suppose you type the word Kerala University and click on the search button, you will see the result as follows:

You see that there are 43,200 documents with reference to Kerala University and the first one is the official web site of the University (www.keralauniversity.edu). All undelined words are called links. If you click on them, you will see full details (If you move mouse over links, they will change shape to a pointing hand). To move back and forth between pages you have visited, use these buttons: Exercise: Try searching using the following words: Kerala, Malayalam, P.T. Usha, Swathi Thirunal, Mathematical Puzzles, English Learning Resources, Online English Dictionary, Nature Pictures, Science Journals, United Nations, Government of India, Indian Festivals, Russian Folk Tales, Kerala Map, Physics Conferences, Windows Tutorial, Mathematics Teaching Techniques For any discipline, the following search key words may be very helpful: Let us take as example Philosophy: (These words should be preferably put inside " ". You may also select advanced search options to specify AND, OR logical connectives). Philosophy Links Philosophy Journals Philosophy Resources Philosophy online resources Philosophy Tutorials Philosophy Exam Papers Philosophy Departments Philosophy Syllabus, Philosophy Humour

SOME SUGGESTED WEBSITES

www.keralauniversity.edu www.ugc.ac.in www.nic.in www.goidirectory.nic.in www.kerala.gov.in www.keralapolice.org www.trivandrumcitypolice.com www.ajanthatheatre.com www.southernrailway.org www.nseindia.com www.assembly.gov www.travlang.com www.batchmates.com www.khel.com www.vivah.com, sakshi.com www.keralamatrimonials.com www.amazon.com www.carnaticmusic.com www.mohanlal.com www.yesudas.com www.loc.gov www.samachar.com www.nature.com www.hindu.org, islam.org www.hotmail.com www.khoj.com www.amazon.com www.mit.edu www.cam.ac.uk www.attukal.org, www.manarcadstmaryschurch.o rg www.geocities.com/maltutor

www.dcbooks.com www.kerala.com, keral.com www.malayalamanorama.co m www.ipl.com www.sex.com(A)