Learning Activity
Search the Internet
Search Technique #1
You can search the Internet for paper topics by using the name of your subject and "paper topics" as the key words for your search category. If you are taking a child development class, you would enter "child development" and "paper topics" in Google. When we did this search, the first result was a list of 68 recent paper topics on children's thinking that Professor James Morgan had prepared for his students at Brown University.
This search also resulted in links to a number of on-line paper mills such as 1DayTermPaperHelp.com where we could have paid $9.95 a page to purchase a term paper. Submitting a term paper from an on-line paper mill as if it were your own--even if you pay a great deal of money for it--is a serious type of plagiarism and could result in your failing a course or being expelled from the college. However, there is a place for on-line paper mills sites in the educational setting. Students might want to consult Writing Fellows Handout #002: Paper Mill Sites as Learning Tools. Faculty members might want to consult Writing Fellows Worksheet #006 Using a Paper Mill to Better Understand Quality Standards.
Search Technique #2
By searching the Internet to find out what has already been written on your topic, you can get an overview of the material as well as get ideas about how you might approach the subject. For example, if you were assigned to write a paper about using technology in the classroom, you might do a Google search using "technology" and "classroom" as your key words. Unfortunately, an overwhelming 5,110,000 web sites were identified when we did this search.
To limit the search, you can add other key words such as adding the subject of the course you are taking. When we added "business" as a search term, we cut the number of web sites to 1,890,000; still too many. Reading the assignment sheet or by talking to your instructor, you can identify other key words you can add to your search to make it more focused.
By modifying our search to "technology 'high school' classroom business 'best practices'" we still came up with 42,500 results. Even though it is not possible to read all 42,500 web pages, by scanning the first several pages of results, we did get a good idea about some of the best teaching techniques that college faculty are using to implement techology in their classroom.
Additional Resources
 May, Francis A. How to Search the Internet. 15 April 2003. University of North Texas Libraries.
May includes the following sections in the web page:
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References and Resources
1DayTermPaperHelp.com. "Home Page." 2005. 1DayTermPaperHelp.com.
May, Francis A. How to Search the Internet. 15 April 2003. University of North Texas Libraries.
Morgan, James. "Recent Paper Topics: Children's Critical Thinking." Nd. Brown University, Departmetn of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences."
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