Internet Research Project

To demonstrate your Internet research skills, you will produce a brochure called "My Future Career."

First, design your brochure:

1. Open a word processing document
2. Save it as: LastNameFirstNameCareerBrochure.rtf and remember to use the .rtf (rich text format) file type so that you will be able to open your document with any word processing application.
3. Create a 2 or 3 column layout on your document, depending on how you would like to fold your brochure.
4. Add the following sections, in any layout you like:

• Title: Write "My Future Career" and the name of the career you want to research.
  
• About the Author: Write about yourself.
  
• References: Cite (list) the URLs of the websites you use in the brochure for both the information and the images you will use.
  
• Information paragraph 1: Describe the career you have chosen.
  
• Information paragraph 2: Describe how to prepare for this career.
• Images: Decide where you will place your images around the brochure.
• Extra-credit: Add a small copy of your self-portrait!
  

Now find your information:

1. Use Google to find at least two web sites with information about your career.
2. Highlight, copy, and paste the URLs to these websites into your references section.
3. Write your two career information paragraphs from the information you found.
4. Find three images of your career. Remember, if you visit the Wikimedia Commons or CreativeCommons.org you will find media in the public domain (free to use).
5. Copy and paste these images into your brochure.
   
6. Highlight, copy, and paste the URLs to the websites where you found your images into your references section or directly under the image.

After you have typed up your information in your brochure and added your images, you are ready to print your brochure in color.

The Internet Skills Assessment rubric can be found in the Class Resources section.

Great job!

How to Use Google to Search for Information on the Internet

You have already learned how to use the Firefox web browser to find web pages on the Internet. You have also learned how to customize your Firefox search engine text box to search for information using a variety of search engines.

Today you will learn how to search for information using Google's search engine by visiting Google's web site: www.google.com

First we will select Google's "SafeSearch" to help us avoid information that is not appropriate for young people. Click on the "Preferences" link on the right side of the search text box and select "Strict Filtering."

Now you are ready to begin searching for information!

When you begin your "query," be as specific as possible:

• Enter a word or group of words in the search text box
  
• Use the minus sign (-) in front of a word to leave it out, for example dolphins -football so you get information on the animal, not the sports team
  
• Put quotation marks (" ") around words that must stay together, for example "pop fly" to research the baseball term
  
• Enter as much information as possible about your query
  
• Click on "Advanced Search" to use Google's advanced search tools
  
• Select up to 100 results in the "Advanced Search" section to see more results on one page
  
• Click on "Advanced Search Tips" to use the full capabilities of Google
  
• Hit return/enter or click "Google Search"
  
• If you click "I'm Feeling Lucky" you will go directly to the first result
  
• Results are listed in order of relevancy based on the number of other web sites that link to that web page

After you have a list of results:

• Click on one of the blue, underlined links to visit a web page
  
• Click the "Back" arrow to return to the list
  
• Open each link in a new tab (hold down the control key when you click on the link or right-click the link and choose "open link in new tab") so that you can easily see all of the web pages you have opened