So you wish to build a web site about award programs for web site recognition in general, and know very little about the subject, but this is a class assignment and there is little choice. Naturally you would start with an outline, not just because one is required for your class, but doing so will help organize thoughts and preparation, rather than starting out willy-nilly.
As your outline is developed there are thoughts as to why a particular section in the outline should be included and just may result in a class assignment which will earn much more than just a passing grade. Preparation of your outline and then gathering available information may result in a revision of your outline, since for the purposes of this discussion we are using only the information which is found by searching on the internet.
Award Programs For Web Site Recognition-Outline
I. History
A. Origins
B. Evolution
II. Purpose
A. Personal
B. Web at Large
III. Current Practice
A. Scope
B. Trend
IV. Benefit
A. Personal
B. Web at Large
V. Cost
A. Time and Benefit
B. Upkeep and Maintenance
Now that our preliminary outline is complete, let us start to search for information using at first a simple search, then a few more complex searches, determine whether we have sufficient information to prepare our class assignment and earn a good grade. We will use Google as our search engine.
First: Search Google with the word website awards, determine whether in the first page view whether there is sufficient information for our class paper. Using results for the first page and not looking any further is a common practice for those new to the web, however we should not discount the relevance of information contained in several page views. Our results are shown on the following page. After a review let us come back to discuss what has been found.
Findings by using the words website awards as the search query: Within the first five entries on the first page view by searching for website awards and web site awards we find the same same entries on both, but in a different ranking order. A further search on the first five pages also reveals that at this preliminary point there may be sufficient information to prepare our paper.
We also find that people may search for the same idea, but differently and the results will vary.
Second: Search Google with 5 selected words from our preliminary outline, compare the first five entries from our search one to those of search two and come back here to discuss what we found. The second search is shown on the following page.
Findings by using website awards, origins, trend, evolution as the search query: Oh goodness gracious, mercy me! The first search we conducted found what seemed to be sufficient information to write our paper but our expanded search did not yield any pages which were the same as the first search.
Conclusions:
Word combinations, spelling and the depth of a search using comma separated words will produce entirely different results.
A usual practice is to make a preliminary search go through a source from the web following links or citations. Not finding what we need or want to then expand our search to include more specific information, like we did with the five word search. This process is more often than not frustrating and or course very time consuming.
No two people could be expected to search in the same manner, nor would two writers talk about the same subject in the same manner. Except of course that one merely copied the other.
Using the web to do research for a paper is time consuming and will often give incomplete preliminary results, as was our exercise. Further searching is often necessary.
Any one waiting until the last minute of write a class paper and relying on the web as the sole source of information is foolish and will probably not get a very good grade either.
The internet is a poor substitute for a good library to do research for a school paper or for that matter develop information to be contained within a website, although the internet may provide a good starting place.
Copyright: 1986-2010