Predicting and Preventing a "Dry Date" in South Central Texas

by Maria Reyes and Kenzie Yoder

Introduction

LESSON PLAN

Author’s Name: Kenzie Yoder

Title of lesson: Searching the Internet Effectively

Technology Lesson: Yes

Date of lesson: TBA

Length of lesson: 50 minutes

Name of course: Algebra II

Honors or regular or magnet: EITHER

Source of the lesson: Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet http://www.brightplanet.com/resources/details/searching.html

TEKS addressed:

§111.33. Algebra II (One-Half to One Credit).

(a) Basic understandings.

(5) Tools for algebraic thinking. Techniques for working with functions and equations are essential in understanding underlying relationships. Students use a variety of representations (concrete, pictorial, numerical, symbolic, graphical, and verbal), tools, and technology (including, but not limited to, calculators with graphing capabilities, data collection devices, and computers) to model mathematical situations to solve meaningful problems.

(b) Knowledge and skills.

(2A.1) Foundations for functions.

The student is expected to:

(B) collect and organize data, make and interpret scatterplots, fit the graph of a function to the data, interpret the results, and proceed to model, predict, and make decisions and critical judgments.

Concept(s): Collecting data from different sources and determining the reliability of these sources.

Performance or learner outcomes

Students will be able to:

Effectively search for data on the internet

Determine which sources are bias

Use searching techniques to reduce bias (multiple sources)

Resources, materials and supplies needed

Computers

Internet Access

Safety Considerations

None

Supplementary materials, handouts

Fill in the Blank Worksheet to guide students’ through the extension on the internet

Five-E Template

PLAN

QUESTIONS/ INSTRUCTIONS

STUDENTS RESPONSES/ TASKS

Engage:

We’ve all had the chance to use the internet to find data or information that we don’t know. Most often we use directories or search engines, but are you using these tools effectively?

Today we’ll explore effective search techniques so that throughout the week your time is used efficiently with maximum (useful) data collection.

Time: 5 minutes

1. Before the internet how did people search for data or information?

2. Do you think they had access to all the information that we do today?

With this wealth of information comes the problem of too much data. There are no guidelines for what can be posted on the internet and the search engines return all results that best match your search phrases. It’s the researchers job to determine what information is relevant, trustworthy and unbiased.

1. Books, Magazines, Surveys, etc…

2. No way.

Explore:

Students will be broken into groups (counting students off by numbers)

and given an effective searching technique or another important piece of information.

The group members will read their section and discuss the techniques within their groups. (Students are given 7 min. for this task)

After the students have discussed the techniques within their groups they will be broken into a different group (sorted by colors) to share their information or technique with their new group members (students will be given 10- min. for this task)

Time: 17-20 minutes

Information the groups discuss will come from a packet that contains all of the important information so that students have access to the techniques while searching the internet throughout the week.

Explain:.

Now that you know how to search for information, let’s talk about how to determine if the data you find is unbiased.

Time: 5 minutes

1. What does bias mean?

(This question comes from a previous lesson)

2. How can we determine if the data is biased?

All very good techniques.=>

For our research purposes, we will do a combination of all of these things.

We will consider a reliable source one that is sponsored by the state or federal government OR a research institute (i.e. UT, A&M, etc.). You will need to collect data from AT LEAST three different sources and take an average of the data to find a good average for each topic.

1. That the information or data provided is skewed to support a certain opinion, organization or cause.

2. Compare the data found on the site to more data from another source, look where the data comes from, look who sponsors the site.

Extend / Elaborate:

Now the students have an idea of where reliable data comes from and how to find it. The students will apply these techniques to search for a variety of topics.

Time: 15 minutes

There will be a total of 10 topics the class will search, this means that there will be 2-3 students searching for the same topic so that we can compare findings.

The students will have to:

-find at least three sources that provide data on their topic and site each source they used with the title of the page and the web address.

Topics:

1. US Population in 1990

2. US Population in 2000

3. Rainfall Totals for Texas in the year 1990

4. Rainfall Totals for Texas in the year 2000

5. Amount of water used in a 15 min. shower

6. Amount of water used by a sprinkler that runs for 30 min.

7. How much water is used in the United States everyday?

8. Where does Austin get its water?

9. Where does San Antonio get its water?

10. How much of the Earth’s surface is covered by water?

Evaluate:

Students participation in their groups and their completed worksheets will serve as an evaluation.

If time allows students will share their findings with their classmates.

Topics that students discuss in their groups during the Exploration:

Red:

Directories

‘Directories’ use trained professionals to classify useful Web sites into a

hierarchical, subject-based structure. Yahoo is the best known and most used of

these services, though the largest is the Open Directory Project

(http://www.dmoz.org). Directories are most useful when looking for information

in clear categories, such as makers of yogurt or listings of educational institutions.

Each directory uses its own categories and means to screen useful sites and assign

them to a single category.

Orange :

Search Engines

‘Search engines’ work differently. Google, AlltheWeb, Teoma, MSN Search and

Yahoo! (through its search function) are some of the best known engines. They

“index” (record by word) each word within all or parts of documents. When you

pose a query to a search engine, it matches your query words against the records it

has in its databases to present a listing of possible documents meeting your

request. Search engines are best for searches in more difficult topic areas or those

which fall into the gray areas between the subject classifications used by

directories. But, search engines are stupid, and can only give you what you ask

for. You can sometimes get thousands (millions!) of documents matching a

query. Also, at best, even the biggest search engines only index a small fraction

of the Internet’s public documents.

Yellow:

Boolean logic is used to construct search statements using logical operators and specified syntax. These are combined into Boolean expressions, which always are either true or false when evaluated

AND — terms on both sides of this operator must be present somewhere in the document in order to be scored as a result
OR — terms on EITHER side of this operator are sufficient to be scored as a result
AND NOT — documents containing the term AFTER this operator are rejected from the results set
NEAR — similar to AND, only both terms have to be within a specified word distance from one another in order to be scored as a result

Green:

Recommendation	Example	Why Important
1. Use nouns and objects as query keywords	planet or planets	Actions (verbs), modifiers (adjectives, adverbs, predicate subjects), and conjunctions are either “thrown away” by the search engines or too variable to be useful
4. Use synonyms via the OR operator	discovery OR find	Cover the likely different ways a concept can be described; generally avoid OR in other cases
7. Distinguish “concepts” with parentheses	(“solar system”) *(“new planet”) (discover* OR find)**	Nest single query “concepts” with parentheses. (Overkill for now, but good practice when first learning.) Simple way to ensure the search engines evaluate your query in the way you want, from left to right

Blue:

Recommendation	Example	Why Important
3. Use appropriate word stem variants via the OR operator	planet OR planets	Word stem variants can increase coverage by up to 50%
6. Combine 2 to 3 “concepts” in query	“solar system” “new planet” Discovery	Triangulating on multiple query concepts narrows and targets results, generally by more than 100-to-1
9. Link “concepts” with the AND operator	((“new planet” OR “new planets”)) AND (discover OR discovery OR discovered OR find) AND (“solar system”)	AND glues the query together. The resulting query is not overly complicated nor nested, and proper left-to-right evaluation order is ensured

Purple:

Recommendation	Example	Why Important
2. Use 6 to 8 keywords in Query	new, planet, discovery, solar, system	More keywords, chosen at the appropriate “level”, can reduce the universe of possible documents returned by 99% or more
5. Combine keywords into phrases where possible	“solar system”	Use quotes to denote phrases. Phrases restrict results to EXACT matches; if combining terms is a natural marriage, narrows and targets results by many times
8. Order “concepts” with subject first	*(“new planet”) (discover* OR find) (“solar system”)**	Put main subject first. Engines tend to rank documents more highly that match first terms or phrases evaluated

Worksheet for Extension:

Name: _______________________________

Effectively Searching the Internet

Question/Topic:

Data	Source (Web Address)

Conclusions (this is the mean or average of your data):

Lesson 2: Regression with a Graphing Calculator