Say you were researching the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was based on reports of an actual historical event, the charge of the 13th Hussars in the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. You might reasonably look to the World-Wide Web for information and use one or more search engines to find what you want. Here is a list of search engines and meta-search engines.
http://www.safekids.com/search.htm
http://www.virtualfreesites.com/search.html
For each, try to find information about the charge of the light brigade by entering the phrase:
“The Charge of the Light Brigade”
both with and without quotes, into the search window. While you are looking in the results that are returned by each of these services, keep track of how well each does in finding:
1: The poem itself.
2: Information about the poem.
3: Information about the historical event upon which the poem is based.
4: Apparently irrelevant stuff (carefull, you never know what might turn up here)
When you have done all of that, tell which service you would use in similar circumstances in the future to find each of the four kinds of information listed above and whether you would use quotes in the search string or not.
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Information |
Which service? |
Quotes or not? |
Why? |
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Poem |
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|
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Info about poem |
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|
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Info about context of poem |
|
|
|
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Irrelevant stuff |
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Deliverables – Print out, fill in, and hand in this page.