Octel: simple searchingImogen Bertin

This is an adaptation of part of a talk I do about search for the http://octel.alt.ac.uk MOOC on Technology Enhanced Learning using the Absorb/Do/Connect model of learning activity design and is intended to take you 15-20 minutes to complete.

The science bit: how Google works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs

What do Google results mean?

The actual URL or web address is in green. Reading the end of the domain (eg .ie or .edu) can give useful info

The blue text is whatever the web designer entered as the page title plus here the file type pdfThe black text is called the “snippet” and is taken from the body of the page

You can choose what type of result eg pictures (images)

For scholarly documents you can see how many other people referenced it

Google advanced search• Does exactly what it says on the tin…

http://www.google.ie/advanced_search• If you want to find Ann followed by Brown and not all the

Anns and all the Browns, put the search term in speech marks “Ann Brown”

This one is really useful. It allows you to search within a specific site. Excellent for public bodies with useless websites and hopeless search features when you cannot find that vital form…

To exclude a word put – before it eg Shark –attack in the query boxTo include words with similar meanings put a tilde ~ before it eg ~foodIf you want to use the function “or” (ie you don’t want pages with both search terms on) then it has to be in upper case eg swallow OR martin otherwise Google will ignore it. It may also ignore words like “and” or “in”

Your turn!• Go to www.google.ie and try searching for reports about the

elderly in Ireland that use another word for elderly. So look for words ‘like’ elderly but not including elderly…

• Now we’re going to look at how your previous search history affects what results Google shows you… please search on Google for:David Cameron Syria chemical weapons

• Write down the first ten words of the snippet (the black text) for the top Google result you see

• Now go to http://PollEV.com and enter this number: 354309 followed by the ten words you wrote down.

• View your ten words, and those that others got, at http://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/Di30yJ5GVnTokgP

Different results… what’s going on…?• Your Google results are personalised based on your search history.

Different people see different website links.• They wouldn’t be that different if you were all using recently-restarted

computers in a college lab with the same Internet address.• Google personalisation is a lot more complicated than Cookies, but

understanding Cookies is a good starting point… • Before next week’s session, check out this web page:

http://www.ehow.com/about_5047612_disadvantages-cookies-computer.html

• Think about your own Internet experiences… use the [class forum] or twitter with hashtag #imooctel to mention one good or bad aspect of cookies or personalised search results that you have personally experienced. We’ll discuss these at the start of the next session.

What Google and facebook hide…• Further watching: Eli Pariser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzZzf6PoyC4