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=**Using efficient Internet research skills**=
 * TESOL 2010, Boston, March 25, 2010 [[image:logo.jpg width="145" height="127" align="right"]]
 * Cambodia TESOL, Phnom Penh, Feb 21-22,  TESOL 2010, Boston,   2009
 * NESA Conference, Athens, Greece, March 31, 2007
 * EFL Skills Conference, American University of Cairo, Center for Adult & Continuing Education, January 24, 2007

= Handout with Links =

=Summary= [|21st century learners] benefit from developing efficient Internet research skills. Students enhance these critical skills with experience in several web-based research tools: advanced search engine options, website evaluation guidelines, bookmark archiving services and citation creators. With experience, students use these tools routinely and become more efficient Internet researchers.

=**Description**=

While today’s [|21st Century learners] are avid users of the Internet, students benefit from developing more efficient Internet research skills. There are a number of web-based tools that enhance these critical research skills: Google advanced searching, ‘Quick’ website evaluation guidelines, ‘delicious’ bookmark archiving, and Citation Machine citation creator. Using Google’s search engine has become routine for students. However, [|Google’s Advanced Search] options allow researchers to personally refine their search, resulting in fewer, yet more relevant results. For example, students can specify domain types, file types and sizes and additional key words with Boolean options. With an understanding of the ‘[|Quick]’ guidelines for younger students or ‘[|The Good, The Bad and The Ugly]’ guidelines for older students, researchers learn to evaluate the quality of the websites they read and reference. They check websites for authority, objectivity, accuracy, currency and completeness. Both guidelines provide sample websites for teachers to use in practice evaluation lessons. Web-based bookmark archiving services like ‘[|delicious]’, allow users to bookmark and archive their websites by topics or tags of their choice. Researchers can annotate each resource for future reference. These personally organized archives permit automatic public sharing of bookmarks, useful for group research activities. Students need experience in creating bibliographic citations of their resources. With [|QuickCite] for younger students and [|Citation Machine] for older students, researchers select the type of source they wish to cite, including book, webpage, interview, or CD-ROM. They then answer a series of questions regarding the specifics of the source. For example, they provide the title, author, date, and publisher. After clicking ‘Submit’, the student receives a citation in accurate MLA style to copy and paste into their bibliography.