Why Key Skills?

• 3 important reasons: • · Develop the skills you

need for good grades in your main course at NESCOT

• · In the longer term - any future qualifications you undertake could benefit from Key Skills qualifications

• Add value to your application for a job

• Employers give priority to applicants who can prove ability in these essential skills:

  Communication    ICT

Numeracy

Job Prospects

To achieve a certificate in Key Skills with NESCOT:

1. Attend Key Skills sessions where you can progress at your own pace.

2. Complete a ‘portfolio’ of evidence (handwritten or printed work) to illustrate your knowledge.

3. Take a test – you will get plenty of practise on past test papers in your Key Skills sessions.

KEYSKILLS ICT What do you need to do for Level 2?

Complete at least 2 differentactivities (purpose 1 andpurpose 2) to show that youcan use:

·  an ICT information source and search for information using Advanced Search

a non-ICT information source

Books, Magazine articles, etc etc….

 purposeful email including sending an attachment

• ·  develop the information found to suit the activity set

• · combine information found using text, image and number

MOST IMPORTANTLY

• Show how you worked through the activities to develop your ideas – screen dumps, drafts, explanation on printouts

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING

• INTERNET SEARCHING• USING NON ICT SOURCES• USING WORD, EXCEL AND

POWERPOINT • USE OF EMAIL AND ATTACHMENTS• PRINT SCREENS• ACCESS DATABASES

Your guide to better searching on the Web

   Searching can be a random process

  ·  Type in what you are looking for

and hope for the best

• Results often too numerous and do not meet expectations

Your guide to better searching on the Web

• NOTE: • Use the .co.uk web sites for UK based

information.• .com sites give world-wide information

which may not be relevant to your search• OR• Underneath the search box, click Pages from the UK to search for UK

websites

Example 

If you are looking to buy a music cd online:

•   A search for music or cd or music cd= many millions of results from all

over the world, including irrelevant sites that have nothing to do with music!

• Even if you add more words to your search, the results are going to be

massive because the search engine looks for each word separately.

Techniques

• If you use the right techniques, your searching will be faster, more efficient and effective.

• There are many different search engines – although Google is the most popular

QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Use quotation marks to narrow down the search:

• “music cd” (in quotation marks) will search for the exact phrase and return fewer results, but will still include non-UK and other irrelevant websites

• Use a plus sign (+) to further narrow the search:

“music cd”+”r&b” – this will force the search engine to look for r&b music cd sites only

No spaces before or after the plus sign

THE MINUS SIGN

• The minus sign (-) will narrow a search even further by excluding the word:

“music cd”+”r&b”-ebay

No spaces before or after the minus sign

Refining the search

  Even the best search techniques can result in too many or too few

sites.•   The results might be from the

wrong kind of source or will place emphasis on irrelevant details

• If your first search doesn’t work -change it

Advanced Search Techniques

• Most search engines have an Advanced Search option

• 

Advanced Search Window

• You can include keywords and specific details giving you greater control over the results

• Remember, if you do not get the results you are looking for, try one of the others listed below:

• www.bbc.co.uk• www.yahoo.co.uk• www.msn.co.uk• www.altavista.co.uk• www.ukplus.co.uk• www.ask.co.uk

Search Engines

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING…

•SMILE•WE CAN MAKE KEYSKILLS FUN..!!