1. Click on the "Home" button in your browser. a. What is the title and URL of the web page you are defaulted to? Mymason b. Why did this appear? How can you change this default setting so that another web page automatically loads when you launch the web browser? It appeared because the settings on this computer have it set up for easy student access to their blackboard, masonlive, etc.You can change it, but I personally do not know how or if student's have access to change it on school computers.
2. Can you change the appearance of web pages within your browser (e.g., the font face and size)? If so, how? Why would you want to? I think so? But I do not know how on the school PC
3. What's the default search engine associated with your web browser? How do you get to it? Google
4. Head to Google (http://www.google.com).
Repeat the same tasks for the following websites:
Bing http://www.bing.com
AltaVista http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.ask.com Ask-I don’t see any indication of how many results come up
Kartoo http://www.kartoo.com/
Nothing at all came up 5. Are the number of hits consistent across search engines? If not, what do you think accounts for the differences? After looking at each of the above search engines, in what cases would you use a search engine that is not your current default (most likely Google)? No, the number of hits are not consistent. The difference must be due to the actual intended use of the search engine. In this case, I would use bing because there are more results.6. Take a look at Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/). Is this a search engine? If not, what would you call it? If you decide that it is, list the reasons that you would classify it as a search engine. I don’t think this is a search engine for general use; seems very specifically designed for computational purposes Using Metasearch Sites Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com Mamma http://www.mamma.com
7. Head to Dogpile. a. What is the main difference between a metasite and a regular search site? It looks like it pulls results from various search engines that are best suited to your search b. Do a search for learning to make web pages. How many matches did you get? How are the matches organized? I can’t see the number of matches, but they’re organize according the their relevance to my search c. Visit a couple of the sites in the search results list. Can you estimate how many of the searches actually relate to learning to make web pages? Most
8. Next, head to Mamma (http://www.mamma.com). a. Do a search for learning to make web pages. How many matches did you get? How are the matches organized? I don’t see the match number; organized by relevance b. How do the matches on Mamma differ from the matches you found in search 7? It searches “how to…” and the results don’t necessarily match the input phrase