Published by Creative Education P O Box 227 Mankato Minnesota 56002 Creative Education is an imprint of The Creative Company www thecreativecompany us Design and production by Liddy Walseth Art direction by Rita Marshall Printed in the United States of America Illustrations by Elwood H Smith 2012 Copyright 2013 Creative Education International copyright reserved in all countries No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bodden Valerie Using the Internet by Valerie Bodden p cm Research for writing Includes bibliographical references and index Summary A narrative guide to conducting research on the Internet complete with an overview of methodologies tips for generating search words and evaluating sites and helpful resources ISBN 978-1-60818-207-7 hard cover ISBN 978-1-56660-151-1 eBook 1 Internet research Juvenile literature 2 Internet searching Juvenile literature 3 Computer network resources Juvenile literature 4 Electronic information resource literacy Juvenile literature I Title ZA4228 B63 2012 025 042’5 dc23 2011040493 First Edition 246897531
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 INTRODUCTION CHAPTERS 6 I N F O R M AT I O N O N T H E I N T E R N E T 1 6 F I N D I N G YO U R WAY A R O U N D 26 REACHING THE RESOURCES 3 6 B E S I T E S AV V Y ACTIVE RESEARCH 14 THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB 24 P R A C T I C E M A K E S P E R F E C T 34 A BIG INVISIBLE WORLD 4 4 W I K I VA L U AT I O N RESOURCES 4 6 G LO S S A RY 47 WEB SITES 48 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 48 INDEX
YOU CONDUCT RESEARCH EVERY DAY AND YOU PROBABLY DON’T EVEN REALIZE IT When you want to know the score of last night’s football game you check on line If you’re wondering how to spell or define supercilious you get out the dictionary And when you’ve forgotten the math assignment you e-mail your friends to ask them Although these research situations are rather informal the skills you use for them are similar to those you need to conduct research for writing After all research is basically just a search a search for sources that contain specific relevant and accurate information about your topic Today many people turn to the Internet for almost all of their informational needs Why It’s quick it’s easy and it’s chock-full of information on nearly every topic imaginable Let’s say you need to research British author J K Rowling for example You type her name into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo and poof millions of results come up in less than a second In addition to the author’s official Web site you can find newspaper and magazine articles ency 4
clopedia entries pages relating to her books and even fan discussions In fact the Internet has so much information that it can be overwhelming to try to extract exactly what you need And it can be difficult to determine whether the information you find is accurate For those reasons you need to learn how to conduct specific logical Internet searches and to evaluate their results carefully When you do the Internet can become a powerful tool for research 5
