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 Online
Research Tips
Safety Tips .
Internet Search Tips .
Evaluate a Web Site
Safety Tips
Always remember to follow the rules of the
road when you're surfing
the information superhighway:
- Ask your parent's permission before giving out
your name, address, phone number, school or any other personal
information on the internet.
- If you see or read something that makes you
uncomfortable, stop using the computer and go tell your parents.
- Never open up emails, files or web pages from
people that you don't know.
Internet
Search Tips
-
Choose a search engine or directory
that's designed especially for kids. Click here
for our list of kid-friendly internet search tools.
-
When you search, try and type in a few
important words about your subject. For example, let's say you have to
answer the question: Where do Emerald Tree Boa Constrictor
snakes live? When you search you could try using important words like
emerald, boa, constrictor, snake, or home.
-
Leave words like a, an, of or the out of your search.
-
If you don't find what you're looking
for, try different words that mean the same thing or try combining different
words together.
-
Sometimes it helps to leave some words
out of your search. If you can't find anything when you type in "where do Emerald Tree
Boa Constrictors live", try less specific words like boa
constrictor home.
Evaluate a Web Site
-
Don't assume that every web site you
visit has truthful, correct information on it--be an Internet Critic!
-
Try to find the author of a web site.
Sometimes it is a group of people rather than just one person who created a
site. Does the author have any qualifications that make their
information more credible or truthful?
-
Look at the site address, or URL, for
additional clues on who created a web site. For example, if the URL ends in
(.edu) it is from a school or college, (.gov) indicates the government,
(.org) an organization, (.mil) the military, and (.com) or (.net) are used
for personal or commercial web sites.
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Look for a last updated or publication
date on a web site. This will help you to determine whether the information
is current or from a long time ago. Oftentimes this date is listed at the
very bottom of a web page.
For more detailed information on how to
evaluate a web site, visit these web sites:
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