Workforce - Workplace

Can't Find It? Search It!
Or, How to Find Workforce Tools On the Internet
Without Going Nuts!

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. Technology based projects for adult educators http://hub1.worlded.org/teachers/careers.htm
2. The Hudson River Center for Program Development http://www.hudrivctr.org/index.htm
3. The Adult Education Teacher's Annotated Webliography http://alri.org/pubs/webliography.html
4. Ask ERIC
http://www.eduref.org/

Now that I have shown 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!

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