Information Literacy Quiz, and Answer Key with Follow-up Activities
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1. List
4 major search engines and a major directory.
Answer
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2. What
is a blog?
Answer |
3.
Why might you use quotation marks when conducting a search?
Answer |
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4. What is a wiki? What is Wikipedia?
Answer
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5. Identify
three Boolean search terms.
Answer
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6. What is a podcast?
Answer
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7.
Identify these extensions and what they represent:
.com
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.sch |
| .co |
.k12 |
| .org |
.edu |
| .net |
.ac |
.gov
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.mil |
| .gov.ca |
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| .gc |
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Answer
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8.
How do you find out who is linked to a web
site? Why is this useful?
Answer
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9. What clues in a Web address might indicate
you are on a personal Web site? Why would this be important to know?
Answer
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10. How do you find the history of any given Web site?
Answer
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11. How do sites get to the top of a results' list in Google?
Answer
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LearningPlus Information Literacy
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1. List 4 major search engines and a major directory.
A quick answer is:
Search Engines - Google, Ask Jeeves, Alltheweb.com, AltaVista, AOL Search, Teoma, Lycos
Directories - Yahoo, Yahoo Kids, Ask Jeeves
For a list of search engines, directories, meta-search engines and all their functions, check Searchenginewatch.
If you are looking for “kidcentric” type search tools for younger students:
http://www.dibdabdoo.com/
http://kids.yahoo.com/
Follow-up Activities: Show students the difference in searching for information through a search engine as compared to using a directory. Further help
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2. What is a blog?
Blog is short for weblog – it is literally a log of the Web.
Follow-up Activities: To see some blogs in action here are few we have been following:
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3. Why might you use quotation marks when conducting a search?
Use “quotation marks” to ensure your keywords appear in your search results in the order you have specified. You would use them if you wanted to research a given phrase. For example, if you conduct a search for global warming, a search WITHOUT quotation marks would find sites that include the words “global” AND “warming” – the words do not have to appear together and you will get more hits than you probably want.
Follow-up Activities: Have students use a search engine to search for a phrase, such as renewable resources without quotation marks, then with quotation marks. Have them note the differences in the number of results.
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4. A wiki is a website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. It is designed for collaborative writing.
Learn more
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is being constructed globally. It is a "copy left" encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute and edit the work of others. Changes are reviewed before being posted.
Visit Wikipedia and search for content of interest - what do you think? Learn more about the origin of Wikipedia
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6. What is a podcast?
A Podcast is an audio or video file shared over the Internet
which can be downloaded and listened to or watched on personal mobile devices (such as iPods) or on personal computers. The purpose of Podcasting is creating content (audio or video) for an audience that wants to listen when they want, where they want, and how they want.
Check out the Education Podcast Network
Marc Prensky "Engage Me or Enrage Me" A keynote speech based on his popular book of the same title.
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7. Identify these extensions and what they represent:
Follow-up Activities: It’s really important that students are familiar with these extensions. for younger students, create a matching game or have them identify the extension within sample URLs. For middle years and up, post an address on the board every day and have students "dissect the address".
.com - company
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.sch – school (used outside of US) |
.co - Company (if paired with a country code,
example “.co.uk,” the state of Colorado or the
country, Columbia) |
.k12 – most US school sites |
| .org - organization |
.edu – US higher ed |
| .net - network |
.ac – higher ed outside of US usually used with country code, example, “.ac.uk” |
.gov – US government
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.mil – US military |
| .gov.ca - government of Canada |
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| .gc - government of Canada |
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More information on domain names
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8. How do you find out who is linked to a web site? Why is this useful?
Go to Alta Vista: www.altavista.com and do a "link:command" search.
In the AltaVista search box type link:paste the web address
(Example: Type link:www.rbe.sk.ca) Or, take a short cut to the results.
Why is this useful? In order to validate websites, we need to ask ourselves, "Who should be linked to this page if it is credible?" For example, if I am doing research on a health related topic, I would think that health organizations should be linked to it. If I find that there are few health organizations linked to the site I am investigating, this is a red flag in terms of the site's credibility.
Follow-up Activities: Encourage students to take this important step in validating the credibility of the sites they choose for research. Students should be able to defend the credibility of the sites they use. Being the top site returned in a Google search does NOT indicate credibility. Consider using some of the MAPping activities on our Information Literacy pages with your students.
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9. What clues in a Web address might indicate you are on a personal Web site?
Look for a tilde “~” or the “%” sign or a personal name “jdoe” or the word “user” after the domain name and the first forward slash “/“
Why would this be important to know?
In a day when anyone can publish just about anything on the web, students need to be able to identify good sources of information. Identifying a site as a personal website
indicates a red flag - further examination is needed. Read Teaching Zack to Think - by Alan November.
More information
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| 10. How do you find the history of any given Web site?
Use the Wayback Machine. Go to www.archive.org and type the URL (web address) of your school division.
Examples: http://www.rbe.sk.ca
http://www.uregina.ca)
Follow-up Activities: Use the Wayback Machine to have students look at the history of the Harry Potter site: www.harrypotter.com. Why has it changed so much over the years?
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11. How do sites get to the top of a results' list in Google?
Google ranks results based on popularity. It counts the number of links from sites all around the Web. For example, if a large number of sites has a specific keyword somewhere on their Web site along with a link to a particular site, Google counts the number of times the keyword appears along with the number of links to a particular site. The higher number of links to a site, the higher Google will rank that site on a list of results.
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