Find What You Need Online: Where to Access the Internet and How to Search for Resources

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Jill Giacomini

Lesson Title

Abstract

This lesson is geared toward adult learners who have limited or no experience using the internet to find information. Students will be able to use what they learn in this lesson to find a location in their community to access the internet (if they don't already have access at home or on their own mobile phone) and use search strategies to narrow a search to find relevant resources when researching an issue or topic.

Learner Audience / Primary Users

The intended audience for this course is adult learners who have limited or no experience using the internet to find information and may need to use public locations (e.g. the library) to obtain access.

Educational Use

Curriculum / Instruction
Informal Education

College & Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) Alignment

Level: Adult Education
Grade Level: A
Subject: English Language Arts / Literacy

Strand: Writing

Standard Description:

CCR Anchor 8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.

A. With guidance and support, recall information from experience or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Language

English

Material Type

Instructional Material

Learning Goals

The purpose of this lesson is for learners to be able to:

Identify places in the local community where a computer with internet access may be available for the public to use.
Apply modifiers to an internet search to find resources that will most likely contain relevant information to a topic being researched.

Keywords

Designers for Learning
Adult Education
Internet search
Internet access
Search terms
Search modifiers
Internet research

Time Required for Lesson

30 minutes or less

Prior Knowledge

None

Required Resources

It would be ideal to conduct this lesson in a computer lab where each student has access to the internet on his or her own computer. However, this lesson can be modified to a space where:

The room has one computer accessible by the instructor with an overhead projector or screen
Instructor and students bring whatever mobile devices they have from home and access the internet via wireless connection
Instructor brings mobile device from home and class passes around
Small group gathers around a computer at a local library with instructor demonstrating initially and then class breaks out to smaller groups to practice on other available computers

Lesson Author & License

Lesson Author: Jill J. Giacomini

License: Creative Commons License; Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license

Part 2: Lesson

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to:

Identify places in the local community where a computer with internet access may be available for the public to use.
Apply modifiers to an internet search to find resources that will most likely contain relevant information to a topic being researched.

Lesson Topics

Key topics covered in this lesson include:

Public Places to Access the Internet
How to Use Modifiers to Find what You Need Online

Context Summary

This lesson helps learners, regardless of their experience with using the internet, to understand that there are public places where the internet is available to them and to learn how to use modifiers to conduct a search online to find information that they need for any purpose,

Relevance to Practice

The key issues addressed in this lesson are relevant to learners because, despite the prevalence of the internet, there are still many who do not have access in their home and are not aware of public places where it is available to them. Further, once they have gained access, it can be overwhelming to sort through the thousands of “hits” and know how to zero in on the information that is needed.

Key Terms and Concepts

Internet
Online Searches
Search Engine
Assess Websites for Quality
Modifiers

Instructional Strategies and Activities

Warm-Up

Time: 5 minutes

Ask students to recall a time when they needed to find information about something specific. The need could be for school or their personal life. It might be that they needed to find information on a particular topic for an assignment, they were trying to figure out how to pay for a ticket they received, or their son had a rash on his arm and they were trying to decide if he needed to go to the doctor. Ask them to make a list of at least three types of information like this that they were seeking or questions they needed help answering.

Introduction

Time: 5 minutes

Ask students to look at their list and identify what they did to find the answer. Did they ask a friend? Did they look in a phone book? The discussion will likely naturally move to looking up the answer on the internet. Explain that this lesson will focus on accessing the internet, finding what you are looking for, and evaluating what you find on the internet.

Presentation / Modeling / Demonstration

Time: 5 minutes

Begin with a discussion about how they typically access the internet. Home computer? Phone? Somewhere else? Ask the class about where one could access the internet if he or she does not have access on their own phone or at home. Be prepared to prompt students if needed by doing some research prior to class to identify specific places in the community where your students could go and what they might need to do in order to gain access (i.e., at a library may need to sign up for a library card first or if have a wireless device would need to know how to connect to the WiFi network). Make a list that all students can see that records their responses.

Guided Practice

Time: 5 minutes

Distribute the “Better searches. Better Results.” worksheet created by Google which lists multiple modifiers that allows an individual to refine searches using things like exact phrases or similar words. (In the event that the included link is broken, this worksheet can be searched for and is posted in multiples places on the web, or a similar worksheet listing modifiers can be substituted.)
Go through the list and discuss what a modifier is and how students can use it to refine their own search results.
Select a topic from the brainstorming session your students completed in the Warm Up Exercise.
Demonstrate how to open a browser window and use a search engine to search for specific terms.
Demonstrate how to use modifiers to progressively refine results.
Compare the number of "hits" that are listed when simply putting keywords into the search engine v. using modifiers.
Once a relevant resource is found, explore the source to determine if the information that was being sought is included.
If you have time, you may choose to have a brief discussion about what to look for to generally assess the reliability of a particular source. See Tips and Tricks for Evaluating Web Sites in Supplementary Resources.

Evaluation

Time: 5 minutes

Complete the Guided Practice exercise listed above again, and ask the students to “drive” the exercise.

Application

Time: 5 minutes

Distribute a worksheet for students to complete in which they conduct their own search (assuming there are access to computers) that asks for topic, keywords and modifiers used in searches, number of hits, and if search was effective.

Worksheet located at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ZOhZy4A_8T7XE3AQHMznB3E-A7rkzIR-r2ot4l57Qg/edit?usp=sharing

Part 3: Supplementary Resources & References

Supplementary Resources

Better searches. Better results.

http://www.binghamtonschools.org/Downloads/Tips_Tricks_17x22.pdf

Tips and Tricks for Evaluating Web Sites

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/webeval.html

References

Better searches. Better results.

http://www.binghamtonschools.org/Downloads/Tips_Tricks_17x22.pdf

Tips and Tricks for Evaluating Web Sites

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/webeval.html

This course content is offered by Designers for Learning under a CC Attribution license.
Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted. Page

(Design Guide effective March 29, 2016)