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Workforce - Workplace
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Can't Find
It? Search It!
Or, How to Find Workforce Tools On the Internet
Without Going Nuts!
by Melaney Moore-Dodson, Texas A&M University
Are you on the Internet and frustrated?
Either you can't find anything you need to find, or when you search
for something, a million pages appear. You certainly don't have the
time to, or want to, go through all those pages to find what you are looking
for. So what do you do, and how do you find what you need?
One of the first things you need
to know is how to find information on the Internet. For that you need to use
a search engine. What is a search engine? Is it a type of Internet automobile?
These new terms are sooooo confusing! A search engine is a computer program
or database that can help you find things you are interested in on the web.
There are two types, indexes and directories. Don't get confused here, the concept
is pretty easy if you can relate to a library catalog and the yellow pages in
the phone book.
The page index is similar to cataloging
a library book; a directory creates a searchable catalog of all the pages it
finds, kind of like the yellow pages. You need to be a little more specific
if searching an index type archive such as AltaVista, but this type of search
engine is the best to use if you want specific information. Indexes search all
the contents of a web site by using spiders or robots that analyze millions
of pages on the web and then index the words that match what you are searching.
Yeek! Spiders and robots! What in the world are those? Don't worry, they are
just types of programs that search the web, they won't come out of your computer
and get you! Yahoo is an example of a directory; it groups web sites together
under categories. Yahoo is a good site to use if you are searching for a specific
topic like "Travel". By using the directory type search engine, a
smaller number of pages are returned because the sites are categorized in Yahoo
by directory just like the "Yellow Pages". Are you now totally confused?
Don't worry, from here it is really easy!
The search engines look for phrases
or words out in the World Wide Web (WWW). Some of the search engines are AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com, Yahoo,
http://www.yahoo.com/ ; Excite
http://search.excite.com ; Hotbot,
http://www.hotbot.com/ and Lycos,
http://www.lycos.com/. There are
many more, but this will get you started. Be sure to find out how
each particular search engine works by reading about them on their home page,
as they use different methodologies for searching.
Now lets get started searching. Since
I am involved in adult literacy, which encompasses the field of workforce development,
workplace learning, and I also happen to be a computer nut, I will use examples
for searching those areas. If you want to find a tutorial about creating web
pages, a good form of search or query would be "html tutorial". Notice
the quotation marks around html tutorial. Use quotation marks when you want
to find a phrase or you want to use multiple words. You could type in "McDonalds
makes hamburgers with pickles" and the search engines would look for documents
with that phrase. What happens in this search scenario is that ONLY documents
with the phrase "html tutorial" will be returned. If you leave off
the quotation marks, the search engines will look for two separate words and
bring back hundreds and hundreds of pages (called hits) with the two separate
words. You would never be able to go through all of them!
If you are an instructor in adult
education working with students who need to reenter the workforce, perhaps you
need information on where to find lesson plans for developing effective communication
skills or how to find a job using the want ads. An effective search would use
the terms +workplace +"lesson plans" +"job interview". To
use these terms, be sure and use the quotation marks to look for the phrase
instead of the individual words. The above search brings up about 1500 related
documents when searching AltaVista. What does the + sign mean? It means, "I
don't want any documents returned without the phrase that I included within
the quotation marks". Otherwise I get tons and tons of pages instead of
a smaller sampling which will probably have what I am looking for.
There are Boolean terms that are
very useful when searching. They are AND, OR, NOT. The "AND" syntax
would be very useful if I were looking for "html tutorial" AND "html
design". I would have pages returned that give me information about design
techniques for web pages and how to create them. If I had used "OR"
I would have pages returned with either "html tutorial" OR "html
design". Had I used only the word design, I would have pages on yard design,
house design, building design, etc. So the more specific you are in your search
the more specific your hits (pages) will be. If I was searching for a "html
tutorial", but not interested in design, I would type in "html tutorial"
NOT "html design". That would return only pages with information in
tutorial form.
One of the problems you might run
into while searching is a bad URL. URL stands for Universal Resource Locator,
which is actually the address of a web site. Here are a few rules about URL's
that will help you.
1. A URL usually has no
spaces.
2. A URL always uses forward slashes as in http://.
3. If you enter a URL incorrectly, your browser will not be able to locate the
site or resource you want.
4. You can find the URL behind any link by passing your mouse cursor over the
link. The pointer will turn into a hand and the URL will appear in the browser's
status bar, usually located at the bottom of your screen.
Perhaps you were given, or found
an address, and you type it into your computer. What do you do when the evil
"HTTP/1.0 404 Object Not Found" screen pops up? This means you have
reached either an outdated site, the document has changed servers, or is just
no longer available. You might be able to "back into" the site! Using
the TCALL address as an example, I typed in http://www-tcall.tamu.edu/source
and got the evil message "HTTP/1.0 404 Object Not Found". Why? Because
the last word, source, is not really the name of a file. I made an error typing
the address in to the computer. Okay, so now what? Go to the Location window
on your browser and remove the last word in the address "source",
hit enter and see what happens. If the proper site comes up, you have "backed
into" the web site you were looking for and now can search the site from
the home page. If that didn't work, continue taking out a word at a time until
you reach a valid page.
The evil message can also appear
when you mistake an (I) or a lowercase (L) for a one (1), include the "lesser
than" (<) or "greater than" (>) sign in the address or perhaps substitute
a zero (0) for a lowercase or uppercase (o). Try checking for one of those errors
and see if that is where the problem lies.
For further information how to search
the Internet, type in "searching the Internet" in one of the search
engines. This will bring up quite a few pages with more information than we
are able to provide here. Following are a few good sites where you can obtain
information for teachers involved in workplace learning:
1. The Hudson River Center for Program Development http://www.hudrivctr.org/index.htm
2. The Adult Education Teacher's Annotated Webliography http://alri.org/pubs/webliography.html
3. Ask ERIC
http://www.eduref.org/
Now that I have given you just a
few tips, your web searching should be a little easier. Just open up those browsers
(Netscape or Internet Explorer) and start searching, because there is a World
Wide Web of information out there to go through! Put those spiders and robots
to work and search it!
About the Author
Melaney Moore-Dodson has worked in
adult education for the past four years. She provides computer support services
and is the Webmaster for the Adult Literacy Clearinghouse. This project is funded
by the Texas Education Agency Division of Adult and Community Education and
housed in the Texas Center for Adult Literacy at Texas A&M University
in College Station. She may be contacted via email at melaney@tamu.edu
 
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