FSC/MEC Research Class 2 January 23

I hope you guys all had a great week. As I told you on Thursday, my plan is to run our virtual class from MEC's lab in Billerica. After much thought and from gauging the tenor of your emails, I could not be certain that all would be completely comfortable in a virtual environment. And that doesn't take into account any glitches you might have run into using your own PC.

I've done this many times with the caveat that I would be in the lab in the role of a support safety net. Before you decide, please, if you haven't done so already, check your TI capability be logging in and going to your office. Make sure that the chat window opens and that you have the option to communicate there.

Either way, I'll be expecting you at 9:00 am. I will physically be in the lab very early, you will be able to see me there, but I won't expect you till 9. If you decide to appear early, please send me a private chat (I'll be sure to hear the bell) so I'll know that you're there.

....to be continued


Before I forget, there are a couple of items that I forgot to go over with you in class last week and I'd like to discuss them now.

First, there are a couple of ancillary sites offered by a couple of search engines that give an interesting and sometimes humorous look at the way people look for things on the Web. Google Trends shows you the latest most common searches rated by total hits: http://www.google.com/trends

They list the most commonly searched for terms over a recent period. Some of them claim to refresh the results every so often which could be as short as a matter of minutes.

I also wanted to spend a few more minutes talking about additional ways that search engines look for keywords. We did mention the 255 possible words inserted as Meta tags, but there are others. Thinking about them will help you during your searches as well as later on when you want to attract search engines to your school's Website. See the newsletter clip below, written by a Web designer.

WHERE DO SEARCH ENGINES LOOK FOR KEYWORDS?

Knowing the Answer Can Boost Your Rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) might seem like some arcane formula known only to a select few Internet gurus, but I’m going to share some secrets that’ll hopefully demystify the art of SEO. If you’ve spent any amount of time doing business online, then you probably know about keywords and keyphrases. But what you may not know is how important these are to your page rankings. When people go online in search of something the first thing they do is type a word or phrase into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. So it’s important to know where the search engines look for those words in relation to your Web site if you want your pages to show up high in the rankings. Text Links A text link is a word or phrase that’s constructed to take visitors either to another page on your site or to another place on the web. Some Web site owners make the mistake of using words like ‘click here’ or even a graphic in order to send viewers to another place. But generic text links won’t help people find you if they’re typing in specific keywords and search engines can’t read graphics. So you need to construct the link so that the keyword IS the link. For example: If you’re offering web design services and you want someone to go to your page regarding that, you would use the term ‘web design services’ as the link. Title Tags Title tags are the words that appear at the very top of your browser window. Since each page normally contains a title, you’ll want to use keywords and phrases that are popular among searches so that the search engines will find them. Don’t use generic terms like ‘Home’ or even cute phrases like ‘Welcome to My Business’. Words like these will get you buried in the rankings. Also be sure that each page on your site has a good keyword or phrase in the title. Description Tags Description tags are one type of meta tags. These tags are not visible to page viewers, but are routinely seen by search engines. Description tags are information that’s inserted into the head of your page’s HTML code (if you’re not comfortable coding pages then get a pro for this). You’ll want to use text that describes your page in this tag. Many search engines use the meta description tag as description that appears in their listings. Some people think that by inserting many keywords into their meta tags is a surefire way to increase their page rankings, but search engines are much smarter now than they used to be, and will often ban pages that cram too many keywords into their description tags. Keyword Tags Keyword tags are another type of meta tag, which aren’t visible to viewers. These are also inserted into the HTML code under the head section. Keyword tags are passed over by the bigger search engines like Google and Yahoo, but you will still need to use these tags because some of the smaller search engines still see and rank them. Headings and Headlines Since search engines look at text in order to find keywords relevant to a search, you need to use those popular words and phrases in headings and headlines for content on your pages. Headline text codes differently than body copy text and ranges in size from H1, which is the largest to H6. Search engines pay more attention to the larger headlines, so again, if you’re not good at HTML coding, ask a pro to help. Body Copy Body copy of web pages is another place that search engines look for keywords so you want to be sure that you’re using good, highly searched keywords within your page’s content. You can help the search engines by making these keywords and phrases bold and by using them more than once on the page. It’s also wise to place your keywords as early in your copy as possible. Some people recommend using your keywords two to three times per paragraph, but doing this often creates awkward sounding copy that turns readers off. Today’s web surfers are smarter than ever. They know when they’re getting good content and when it’s just words designed to show up high in the rankings. There’s no sense in getting people to your website and then giving them garbage to read. Alt Tags Alt text are words that appear when you place your cursor over an image contained on your pages - these are sometimes referred to as mouseovers. Again, viewers don’t normally see these tags, but the search engines do pick them up. While there’s more to SEO than just keywords, they are the most important aspect to getting good rankings. They are the words typed in by searchers and they are the words that are going to bring visitors to your site – so choose and use them wisely. - Nina Menezes

Next we need to look at some directories of search engines. The first one lists a long list of engines along with the types of information they would best reveal. The site was last updated in 2009-a good thing and it's been around for many years in another form. It was created by a librarian.

http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

Please take the next chunk of time to explore the list. Zero in on two that you are unfamiliar with, but two that would probably locate information you might typically be looking for and use the same search terms on both engines to compare results. Try, even better, to locate files related to what you teach, but may be in an unusual format such as audio or image files.

Next, please look at KidsClick which I'm sure must be known to a lot of you: http://www.kidsclick.org/ ,which is a librarian compiled matrix of engines suitable for children.

Then take a look here: http://www.digital-librarian.com/search.html Digital Librarian: Search & Navigation Tools and try the same strategy with two new engines there as you did at NoodleTools. They tout their site as The Best of the Web and it's range is certainly various and vast-the most comprehensive list I've seen. Again, we'll take some time here-15 minutes or so.

While you're in TI, please take the next 15 minutes or so to look at the ASO room there. ASO stands for After School Online. ASO is where some interesting real time discussions take place between teachers from everywhere. ASO was where I had my first encounter with Tapped In.

As you enter ASO, please look for the "Featured Items" area and click on the link entitled "Archived Transcripts". When that opens you'll ses categories like -Arts and Humanities, -General Education, -Professional Development, and -Math, Science, and Technology. Click on one of those and then to the transcripts of a recent year. Look down through the topics until you find a promising one and then open it.

Let me tell you what to expect here and why I'd like you to look there. These transcripts deal with problems that we all, as teachers, encounter. Here you'll find opinions as well as links to Websites that offer some solutions.

For example: Under Math, Science... I found in the 2009 transcripts the topic

Cyberethics, Cybersafety, Cybersecurity

and within that a number of discussions regarding the subject of Sexting. Please take a look in the ASO and I'll see you when you get back to my office when you're done. Take your time-at least 15 mins. I'll be waiting.






Next week, one of the first things we'll be doing is to take a tour of the FSC online library services as well as additional services available to off campus learners as we are. A presentation will be given to us by Linda LeBlanc (lileblanc@fsc.edu) FSC's Access Services Librarian.

She's very effective, organized, and patient. I know you'll be impressed with all the their library has to offer to you as one of their students.

She'll arrive around 9 and stay for lunch. It's SOP to have her do these sessions for the particular course since it's focus is research. I've known Linda for over ten years and probably had her do this for close to that many times I've taught this course.


To that end and in preparation for next week, let's do a dry run and go to http://www.fsc.edu/library/, login using the login and password that I sent you. Once in, please click the "Library Services" on the left, then click on the link "Distributed Learning Services". Then read the following:

What are distributed learning library services?

How do I access these services?

Who can use these services?

Please let me know if you have any problems with ID or password as you'll be using them next week.


Finally: Drifting toward a project selection.
Please spend the rest of class time browsing the files you'll find at http://gilligan.mec.edu/~groves They are almost exclusively teacher created projects prepared for the Web. They run the gamut; some are Webquest while others are Pathfinders (see Pathfinder Guidelines with the featured files in my office).

As you peruse the list of projects by teacher name, please note the content of course, but also observe the color palette that they chose along with the graphics. The content you would extrapolate to your own needs as well as the selection of graphics, but ask yourself, "How does the whole thing work?" and "Could I adapt this to my curriculum?"

The degree of sophistication of the projects, will vary quite a bit. It depended on the level required for each class. Please remember that all those teachers came to the class with different skill sets, and they all worked very hard to create an effective learning object for their students.

You will also find a few things that do not appear to belong there. You'll probably be right. They might have been posted there as examples for other classes on how to upload files of different formats. If you do encounter them, please disregard them and move on to others.

Assignment for Monday:

Please chose two of the projects at the "gilligan" site that you find most useful. Create a new post in your blog and mention the sites and what you thought about them in a paragraph or so.



For those who are "chompin' at the bit", I'll give you a few tips on how to get started on the things that I can help you with-links, graphics, text. Notice that I didn't mention content. That's your forte, not mine.

As you begin to focus in on your topic, please bookmark any sites that you feel might have something you can use either in terms of graphics or even merely a possible link off your page/s.

That way you won't be frustrated in trying to relocate something you can't remember.

Next, save any superb graphics you encounter-ones that you couldn't live without. Don't go crazy because fewer is better. Then save them to a "Graphics" folder on your flash drive. If you don't remember or don't know how, I'll show you now or later or even both.