4th+Assignment+Y+The+Last+Man

__**PLAGUES: WHAT ARE THEY?**__ (Skill focus: Determining Importance,Summarizing,Research)

Have you ever heard of a **__plague__** before? Where? If you haven't, I'm going to give you a chance to do a little of your own research to find out what plagues are and what they do. If you have heard about plagues, this will give you a chance to learn about several new ones and will refresh your memory in case you haven't thought about plagues for a long time--which I'm pretty sure you haven't.

Before you go wild searching the internet for information, let's first look at a couple of ground rules for doing online research!

__**First**:__


 * //Know what you are looking for//. This sounds straight-forward, but it can be tricky sometimes. You may be searching only one search term for this assignment on plagues, but sometimes it is important to know when your search is a multi-step search (a search that takes a couple of steps and different search terms) or a single-step search (like for this assignment, a search that uses only one search word or term). Example: Multi-step: "What day will the vice president's birthday fall under next year?" Single-step: "When is 'Boxing Day'?" Knowing if it's going to take multiple searches or not will save you time and a possible headache.


 * __Second__**:


 * //Use multiple search engines//. Sure Google has replaced ever remembering anything for the rest of our lives, but it's not the one and only search engine. Remember, the "bigger" Google is, the more websites will do to make sure they are on the first page of Google search results. Sometimes it doesn't matter how good the website actually is but how they set it up to make it to the famed first page of results.


 * __Third__**:


 * //Word choice//. Similar to the first rule, the actual words you use for a search matter. Most of the time you will feel inclined to search an entire question. This may get you the results you are looking for, but it may also limit the results to simply that ONE question. Also, you don't need every letter and every word for a search. Including words like, "a," or "the," or "for" will not get you more results--leave them out of your search.


 * __Fourth__**:


 * //Learn how to use symbols//. Parenthesis (" "), pluses (+), and minuses (-) can enhance your searches. Parenthesis are good when you're looking for a phrase or lyrics or a section of a larger text. If you want to find the rest of the "99 Problems" lyrics, you could enter "I'm from the hood stupid, what type of facts are those." This keeps the term together. Without parenthesis, the search will look for each word individually. Using a plus is a little different than using parenthesis because it asks the Internet to show all results no matter what. So if you're looking for "Gears of War 3" but only for the PS3, you'd search "Gears of War 3 + PS3." This will eliminate all search results for "Gears of War 3" on another system (I know it's only for X-Box!). Minus is sort of useless, but available for you to use anyway. Basically, the minus says to the search engine, "please don't include this certain term." So, like the example above, if you want to make sure that there's no X-Box results in your search for "Gears of War 3," you'd enter a search like this: "Gears of War 3 - X-Box." Another easy way to do this is to simply use the plus sign and to leave out "X-Box" altogether.

__**Fifth**__:


 * //Ask refined questions//. Basically all that means is instead of searching "When is the full moon?" you can search "The full moon is." The reason for this is, the search engine will search your question the way your question is written. __You don't want to find your question, you want to find your answer!__ When you write your search using wording that looks like the answer, it'll be easier for the search engine to find what you are looking for.

__**Sixth**__:


 * //Check the site where you are getting your information!// This is the trickiest of all the rules. How do you know if you can trust the information on a site or not? Well, for one, never stop at just one website. If it's a topic you are not too familiar with, like looking up information about the pattern of prime numbers (there isn't one), you may not know 100% if what a website is saying is right or not. That's when it's important to go to multiple sites and see if the information is the same. If one site says one thing and another site says something completely different, go to a third! If that site says something different, go to a forth until you start seeing information repeating. This can get tricky too because some sites copy word for word from other sites. When this happens, look for the site that seems most "trustworthy." All this means is if you're looking up something about Math, you don't want info from a religious based website (there are way more than you realize--not that that's bad necessarily). A good way to check a site's credibility is to see if its web address ends in .gov (something related to government), .edu (education/school), or .org (organization)--there's a pretty good chance it's going to be an okay site if it ends in one of those (read here for more info regarding "domain names")//.// You can also check the "About" or "About Us" links that most websites have to find out who exactly is telling you whatever it is that you are reading. __//**ALWAYS QUESTION WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INFORMATION ON ANY AND EVERY WEBSITE YOU GET INFORMATION FROM!!!!!!**//__ When we were kids they'd always tell us not to talk to strangers or take candy from a stranger but with the digital age, that's all we ever do. Where did the danger go? Nowhere. It's still very much there.

After reading all of this, I need to know that you understand what you just read. Most of the time it's easy to skim over a lot of words and just let the assignment tell you what you need to know, but that's not how this particular assignment works. If you've read everything, I want you to open your gmail account, compose an email to me at olympusenglish@gmail.com and write a short summary for each rule. So, what I want you to do is write two to three sentences explaining what each rule said. What this means is you say to me, in writing, what you think each rule means WITHOUT using the words I used to explain each rule. Make sense? For example: "The fourth rule of doing internet research is basically talking about using symbols to help you get better search results. Some symbols help you find just the words, some symbols help keep certain words out, and some symbols keep certain terms out." When you do your assignment and are ready to submit it, please put "Assignment 4a" in the subject of your email to me. If you need help with summarizing, please let me know and I will help you. Once you have done that, please continue on.

**(worth 1 point)**


 * click here for part 2 of this assignment*