The internet has so many great resources to gather information for projects but you need to be careful. There are some risks when using the internet for research. This can include plagiarism, copyright and seeing scary or inappropriate stuff. Use the links on the left hand side to read more about these topics. Here are some tips to get the best out of your online research:
• Use exact keywords to search and your results will be better. Don't type the whole question or common words like 'the' in the search engine.
• Put your keywords in quotation marks in a search engine and you will get better results. For example if your question is "How did the treaty of Waitangi affect the Maori of New Zealand?", don't type in the whole question. Type in keywords like "Treaty of Waitangi".
• Click the "search within results" link to narrow down your list of sites to look at. For example after you have typed in your keywords "Treaty of Waitangi", look to the bottom of your search engine site and click on "search within reults" link shown on the toolbar and type in "Maori" or "effects", to find specific information on how the treaty affected Maori.
• When you visit a website, before using the information in your report check to see who wrote it and if they actually have the expertise to write on those topics.
• When you do a search you will find a lot of useless sites. If you come across a bad or scary site tell a trusted adult.
• Websites often have links to other websites or advertising banners. Sometimes these can link to inappropriate sites or make you get annoying pop ups in future so it's best not to click on them.
• Sites like wikipedia might have fake information in them, anyone can add stuff to those sites so its never a good idea to use it for a project for school.
• If you are doing your school project on cyberbullying we can send you resources to help click here to view the resources.
• There is a site which can help you with your research questions at www.anyquestions.co.nz it is an online information service provided by libraries. They can provide an online reference for students.There is also a Te Reo version of this site on this link www.uiangapatai.co.nz
When researching look for:
• The links that the search engine returns first (on the first half of the page). These are usually the most relevant to your search.
• the information included about each site. Look for the search term that you used to be repeated in the information listed below the link.
• information about the site that makes sense to you. Are real sentences used or just random words that don’t seem to belong together? Only open those links where you understand what the information is saying.
• Links where the URL (link to an explanation of URLS) contains words that are related to your search term. For example, if your search term was ‘Kelly Clarkson ’, you might not be surprised to see words like ‘American Idol’ or the name of her record company, ‘RCA Records’, in the information about the link. It’s likely that links that contain words similar to your search term are safer to open than URLs that don’t seem to have anything to do with it.
Email us: queries@netsafe.org.nz
Bebo us: www.bebo.com/netsafe
Msn us: net_safe@hotmail.com
Phone us: 0508 638 723
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