ICT

1. Which search site are you using? __**AOL search**__ Let’s say your teacher tells you to find out __whether the element mercury is toxic__. 2. Start by typing in __mercury__ and hitting the enter key. 3. How many Web pages were found? __**432,000,000**__ 4. Look over the description of the first few sites. What are they about?

By now you may realize that the word mercury has more than one meaning. 5. Try adding another word to tell what about mercury really interests you. 6. Type in __mercury__ __element__. 7. How many Web pages were found? 8. Look over the description of the first few sites. What are they about? Although these sites might have the answer to your question, they might not. 9. Now try adding a third word. Type in mercury element toxic. 10. How many Web pages were found? 11. Look over the description of the first few sites. What are they about? Now you are getting somewhere! By now all the sites retrieved should help answer the question.

Looking at the Numbers 12. Compare the number of Web pages found for the three searches. What do they tell you about how the search engine does its work?

Use Synonyms (a word that means the same as another word)

Let's say you want to find out about living on the planet Mars. You think your keywords should be __planet__ __Mars__ __living__. 13. Put those three words to the search site. 14. How many Web pages were found? 15. Look over the description of the first few sites. What are they about Now think of synonyms for each keyword. Well, a planet is a planet. Mars is Mars. But other words might work just as well as living, such as coloninzing. 16. Put in planet Mars colonizing to the search site. 17.How many Web pages were found? 18. Look over the description of the first few sites. What are they about?