Beyond Feelings

CHAPTER 17 Conducting Inquiry
183
and the research network system evolved into the Internet, also called the
World Wide Web (WWW, or Web). Over the years it has become a major
medium of communications and learning. All you need to access the
Internet is a computer with a modem and an institutional or commercial
Internet service provider (ISP).
Millions of Web sites are available, but you must know the address
of a site before you can access it. Also—and this is especially
important—you must enter the address exactly. (An added space or
period or letter will prevent you from reaching the site.) Most Web
addresses begin as follows: http://www. (If you see a Web address
beginning with www, understand that this is an abbreviation and you
may have to add the first part of the address to access the site.) If you
don’t know what site is appropriate or have forgotten a Web address,
you can consult one of the many available search engines, such as
www.askjeeves.com.
The ending of a Web address will tell you whether you are visiting
a government site (.gov), an education site (.edu), a nonprofit organization
site (.org), or a commercial site (.com). Web sites reflect the
biases and/or agendas of the people who created them. Generally
speaking, government and education sites and many nonprofit organization
sites are designed to provide the public with useful information,
whereas commercial sites are designed to sell products and
services. Knowing whose site you are visiting will help you evaluate
the reliability of the information you find there. Such evaluation is at
least as necessary with the Internet as it is with books and other media,
perhaps more so.
Here is a comprehensive but easy-to-use strategy for conducting
inquiry on the Internet.
1. Use a search engine. A search engine is a tool for using the Internet
efficiently. All you need to do is enter the search term (topic) you wish to
find information about and wait a second or so for the search to be completed.
The broader your search term, the more information you will
receive. “Education” could produce 60 million items; “U.S. education,”
perhaps 6 million items; “U.S. education corporal punishment,” fewer
than 50,000 items. So it is prudent to be precise in your choice of terms
and to modify them as necessary.
There are many search engines and even meta-search engines,
which search other search engines. The following Web site, sponsored
by the University of California at Berkeley, offers a clear and comprehensive
explanation of the choices and some recommendations:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/
MetaSearch.html. This Web site recommends www.google.com and
also makes favorable mention of www.alltheweb.com and
www.altavista.com. (Another good choice would be www.bing.com.)