Initiation Stage: when a person first becomes aware of a lack of knowledge or understanding, feelings of uncertainty and apprehension are common.
Searching from the very beginning:
Why I search the way I do?
To logically work through a sequence for searching, I decided to go through the following topics in an order that I believe is relevant. I started with Information Literacy because to do any kind of inquiry searching it is necessary to understand how to locate, analysis and synthesize information. This leads into Inquiry based learning which is defined as "seeking for truth, information, or knowledge -- seeking information by questioning." (Exline, 2004). Various dictionaries also relate Inquiry to being a question intended to get information about someone or something. The action of seeking, esp. (now always) for truth, knowledge, or information concerning something; search, research, investigation, examination ( McMillon 2009). Kuhlthau (2007, p.2) states that Inquiry is an approach to learning whereby students find and use a variety of sources of information and ideas to increase their understanding of a problem, topic, or issue.” From this we can see that Inquiry is part of Information Literacy as it is the process where teachers teach skills such as "exploring and clarifying information, the identification and clarification of questions and issues, and following this, the collection and processing of information, as well as the processes of adapting and transferring knowledge" (MCEETYA, 2008). One form of Inquiry is Guided Inquiry designed by Carol Kuhlthau who states that Guided Inquiry is an “integrated unit of inquiry” Kuhlthau, 2007). Guided Inquiry is grounded in a constructivist approach to learning, based on the Information Search Process (Kuhlthau, 2011),
I had never heard of or used Boolean operators which we were supposed to use, to search for different topics. I was feeling overwhelmed by this term and did not know quite how to use these when searching so I went to YouTube to see if there was a clip that could help clarify this for me. At the start of searching I was rather unsure of what Boolean was, but I discovered the following link that really does a fantastic job of explaining what happens when we put certain words into search boxes.
This is what I have learnt about Boolean operators:
AND | Means that all searched must be included in the search. | The more words I join with “and”, the smaller the results I will get. |
OR | Use OR when there are similar words or synonyms to describe the topic. It means any of the words may be included in the search. | The more words I join with “Or”, the broader or wider the search will be. |
NOT | Using NOT will exclude results containing a particular word. | “Not” reduces the number of results. |
With this in mind, I needed to discover what the benefits of using quotation marks are when searching and I discovered this fantastic YouTube clip that helped me get a better understanding of what happens when I use either double or singular quotation marks in each box.
What I have learnt about using Quotation marks in searching:
1. When there is more than two words, quotation marks should be used.The YouTube clip states that “without quotation marks, the database searches for each term”.
2. It limits the search to just searching for the words in it.
3. Search phrases quotation marks order the database to search for those words in that order.
Bibliography:
Kuthlthau, Carol. (2007). Guided Inquiry: Learning in te 21st Century. Libraries Unlimited. United States of America.
Kuhlthau, Carol Collier. (2011). Information Search Process.http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/information_search_process.htm [Accessed 11th August, 2011]
Exline, Joe. (2004) What is Inquiry based Learning?. Educational Broadcasting Corporation [Accessed 11th August, 2011]
Macmillan Dictionary. (2009). Inquiry Based Learning. Macmillan Publishers Limited [Accessed, 11th August, 2011]
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