Searching the Net's Educational Resource Center

Now locating information that can be located on several topics and pages within the Net's Educational Resource Center has become a lot easier! Please look through the helpdul terms and tips located below before entering your search terms.  Then select the search method below to find the information you are looking for. My personal method for cutting down on redundant results is to always check spelling and enclose search terms or topics within quotes.

Simple Search:

Or if you prefer to do an Advanced Search please use the following form:

Useful Search Terms and Tips:

- or minus sign
The symbol placed in front of a search term that tells the search engine, "Don't show me any documents that contain this word." The - goes directly in front of the word that you do not want to find, without any spaces. For example, if you want documents about Gems, but aren't interested in rubies, you could type Gems -rubies. (You could also use the word NOT, searching for Gems NOT rubies.)

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then plus and minus can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Plus and minus are ignored if the Advanced Search Form "all" or "phrase" radio button is selected.

+ - plus sign
The symbol placed in front of a search term that tells the search engine, "Show me documents that contain this word." The + goes directly in front of the word you want found, with no spaces. For example, if you want to find documents that definitely contain the word "computers" and might contain the word "laptops," you would type in: +computers laptops.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then plus and minus can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Plus and minus are ignored if the Advanced Search Form "all" or "phrase" radio button is selected.

And
A Boolean search modifier that is used to tell the search engine to look for documents containing all of the search terms you type. For example, typing fire AND ice in a search engine would only return documents that contained both fire and ice. AND is used to narrow down the range of your search.

Boolean - also Boolean operator
A system of logic that, when applied to searches, modifies search terms with the "operators" AND, OR and NOT. Boolean operators allow you to broaden or narrow the range of your search.

Capitalization:
Capitalize proper nouns. Lowercase words will match any case. For example, typing search will return all documents containing the words search, Search, and SEARCH.

"More Like This" - also query by example
A feature of some search engines through which you can specify the results of one search as the search terms for a new search. If you find a site that you like, you can click more like this next it on the search page and the engine will find more sites like it for you to look at. This term is frequently underneath the original link in blue underlined hyperlink form.

Not - also And not
A Boolean search modifier that is used to tell the search engine to ignore documents that contain the specified word. For example, typing apple NOT fruit in a search engine would return documents containing the word apple, but not the word fruit. NOT is used to narrow the range of your search.

OR
A Boolean search modifier that is used to tell the search engine to look for documents containing any of the search terms you typed. For example, typing black OR white in a search engine would return documents that contained the word black, documents containing the word white, and documents containing both black and white. OR is used to broaden the range of your search.

Phrase
A group of words that are usually placed in quotes. Telling a search engine to look for a phrase means it will look for those words exactly and in that order. For example, to look for Web pages about the movie The Big Chill, type "The Big Chill" (in quotes), and the search engine will look for that entire phrase.  Placing quotes around the phrase will also narrow down the results that are found so you are not wading through 10,000 results!

Query
An individual search performed using a search engine.

Quotes
Use quotes to enclose search terms or phrases, which will tend to minimize the amount of useless results that you get. Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, "Bataan Death March." Otherwise, the search results will include the words Bataan, Death and March, but not necessarily in that order. The words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then quotes can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Quotes are ignored if the Advanced Search Form "all" or "phrase" radio button is selected.

Relevance
The search engine's estimate of how closely your search results matched what you typed. Most search engines rank the results by relevance, showing you the best matches first.

Results
The list of Web pages and documents that match the search terms you typed.

Search Engine
A tool that lets you find information on the Internet. You type words  or phrases that describ what you are looking for, and the search engine scours the Internet for Web sites that match your description. These words are what web sites place in their meta tags for the engines to use to locate the information. An example of a search engine is Metacrawler.

Search Terms
Key words and terms that describe what you're looking for.

Similar words
The more similar words you use in a search, the more relevant results you will get back. Example: War, Battle, Campaign, Conflict

Spelling - Double Check your spelling
Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly. If Sound-Alike Matching is turned on, the search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it is always best to try to spell the search terms correctly.

Spider - also Bot, Robot, Crawler
An automated computer program that searches the Internet. Many search engines use spiders to catalog information on the Internet.

TeacherNet: Isn't he cute? 


Copyright © 1998-2002 SSG All Rights Reserved