Internet Communication

Year Six have been investigating searching on the internet and how to refine our internet searches, including being purposeful in the search engine of our choice. We have more choices that we sometimes think when we carry out a search.

We would like to share our key findings from this learning:

If you would like to find something on the internet, then you carry out a search in a search engine (Elodie).

To carry out a search, you can use the address bar at the top of the page. (Noah)

There are different search engines to choose between, like Bing and Google. (Lexie)

Each search engine has a different emphasis; for example, Swiss Cow is a family friendly search engine, whereas Duck Duck Go keeps user’s information more securely. (Jack)

Google is owned by Google and Bing is owned by Miscrosoft. (Joel)

You can search in the address bar and in the search engine's search box. (Oliver)

Did you know that you can change the search engine that is used when you type into the address bar? Just go to your settings. (Ellis)

Remember that your searches don't have to make sense. Don't write your whole question. Instead, just add the key words. For example, Boot, visit, things to do.

What are Webcrawlers?

We then examined how web crawlers search the internet to create indexes to make search engines quicker. We even had a go at carrying out our own indexing of common objects in the classroom! It was amazing to think how many websites contain the same words to be indexed!

Trying out 'switched-off' activities away from the computer helps us to understand concepts that can be tricky to understand on their own. These are examples from Harry, Fred, Elodie and Ellis.

Trying to be number one!

Next, we examined how search engines rank websites. Although not all of the criteria are shared by the search engines, we do know some of them. In groups, we tried to draft out a website that would be ranked higher than that of our friends.

Adding titles with the search term and links to popular sites helped to raise our ranking; however, adding our search term again and again did not help. Search engine algorithms would identify this and ignore repetitions of search terms like, 'Berkswich CE Primary'.

This is how each group was ranked...

It was interesting to take a closer look and notice aspects that we usually take for granted. We realised that websites can pay for a higher ranking, but it also depends on other conditions too. Some of these we do not always know! 

Knowing that search engines make money, means that we can be mindful about how we are influenced by ranking. This helps us to make our own decisions and perhaps search further if we need information or to buy a product. 

Online Communications

The children evaluated methods of online communication, considering the methods that they know and why these are chosen...

This led on to a careful consideration of how the methods listed differ. We considered what is shared, whether it was one-to-one or one-to-many, if adverts are involved, if the communications are one-way or two-way and what can be shared. It was interesting considering privacy.

Whilst some methods are secure, this is different to private, since most methods of communication can be kept by another person involved in the communication. 

We were surprised to learn about some of the age restrictions and this showed us how important it is to learn more and more about keeping safe online.