Week 3 - Information Literacy Quiz Activity

Below you will see the Information Literacy Quiz. All questions and my answers are in black. All answers provided by the answer key that were different than mine are provided in red.

1.List 4 major search engines and a major directory

·         Google

·         Bing

·         Yahoo

·         MSN

2. What is a blog?

·         Is an online application in a journal format in which the user can create posts and other users can view and comment on each post. Posts can include text, videos, images, and links.

Blog is short for weblog – it is literally a log of the Web 

3. Why might you use quotation marks when conducting a search?

·         By using quotation marks you are telling the search engine to search for specifically those words you have written.

Use “quotation marks” to ensure your keywords appear in your search results in the order you have specified. You would use them if you wanted to research a given phrase. For example, if you conduct a search for global warming, a search WITHOUT quotation marks would find sites that include the words “global” AND “warming” – the words do not have to appear together and you will get more hits than you probably want. 

4. URL is an acronym for…

·         Universal Resource Locator

 correct

5. Identify three Boolean search terms.

·         and

·         or

·         Not

             correct

6. How do you find the owner or publisher of a Web site?

·         Scroll to the bottom of the page and find the copyright information at the bottom of the page. I think you can also go to file and click on webpage properties to obtain information about the page.

Go to www.easywhois.com and enter the URL of the site you would like to research. 

7. Identify these extensions and what they represent:

.org – organization                             

 .com – company

.sch – school  (used outside of US)    

.k12 – K through 12 Public School Site most US school sites

.edu – educational site US higher ed   

.gov – government site

.ac - ?  higher ed outside of US usually used with country code, example, “.ac.uk”                        

.net – network site

.mil – military site                                               

.co - ?  (if paired with a country code, example “.co.uk,” the state of Colorado or the country, Columbia)

8. How do you find out who is linked to your school’s Web site?

·         Don’t understand what the question is asking for.

Go to Google: www.google.com and do a link: command search. In the search box type link:your school’s address. 

9. What clues in a Web address might indicate you are on a personal Web site?

·         A name being displayed – multiple slashes and indications such as page levels. A username.

 Look for a tilde “~” or the “%” sign or a personal name “jdoe” or the word “user” after the domain name and the first forward slash “/“

10. How would you conduct a search for the following: a list of Web sites of all the academic institutions in South Africa? (Hint: South Africa’s country code is .za)

·         “Educational Institutions” + “South Africa” + za

 Go to Google: www.google.com and type site:ac.za in the search box

11. How do you find the history of any given Web site?

·         Not sure

 Use the Wayback Machine. Go to www.archive.org and type the URL of the web site you would like to research into the search box.

12. How would you conduct a search for the following: US higher education Web sites that contain the word turtle?

·         “turtle” edu

Go to Google: www.google.com and type “site:edu + turtle” in the search box. 

13. How do sites get to the top of a result list in Google?

·         Having the majority key words related to the search

       One factor Google uses to rank sites is popularity. It counts the number of links from sites all around the Web. For example, if a large number of sites has a specific keyword somewhere on their Web site along with a link to a particular site, Google counts the number of times the keyword appears along with the number of links to a particular site. The higher number of links to a site, the higher Google will rank that site on a list of results. There are several additional factors as well, including but not limited to the title of the site, the site’s meta information and the actual content of the site.