What Keywords Should I Use?Objectives - ISTE NETS for Students #3: Research and Information Fluency
"locate information from a variety of sources and media"
Materials
Directions
Students stand in for words in a sentence and decide which combination is the most powerful for retrieving information.
Ahead of time, write out a search question placing one word on each paper.
For this example, we'll use the question: WHAT IS THE TOP SPEED OF EARTH'S FASTEST ANIMAL? Nine sheets of paper and nine students are required for the activity. The remaining students decide what happens to the words.
Ask for nine voluneers to come up front and hand each one a word. Arrange them in order facing the rest of the class (depending on time and skill, they can do this).
Explain to the rest of the class that if they want to find the answer to this question by looking online, they have to choose words carefully. If they use all the words, they probably won't find an answer.
So in order to identify the really important words, they will call out words one at a time not to include. When a word is called, have the student holding that word sit down in place. See if the class agrees that this word is not needed. If not everyone agrees, discuss the reasons. This could be a good time to point out words that are STOP words (what, is, the, of) that a search engine would ignore even if they were used (it helps return results faster).
Challenge the class to reduce the query to as few words as possible, keeping in mind the original question. "Will these words likely retrieve the information we need?"
In this example, the only words that are essential are FASTEST ANIMAL. EARTH is unnecessary, because where else would you find animals? TOP and SPEED are the same as FASTEST.
Repeat the activity with other questions and different volunteers.
This activity provides opportunities to talk about vocabulary and parts of speech. Have the children watch for patterns. Usually, proper nouns and numbers are the most powerful terms (Why? because they are so specific and don't have many meanings). Words like TOP are weak because they have many meanings. Verbs are usually weak too. Too many words makes it hard for the search engine to find pages with exactly those words (literal matching).
Option: This activity also may be used to talk about different words that would make the search even stronger. "Can you think of a better word to use than _____? Why is it better?" This connects the activity to finding better keywords (homing in).
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