AECOM Faculty Retreat Appropriate and Effective Use of Computers in Education

Group A - Belfer 1105
Finding Resources on the Web

Computer based material can either be developed locally or obtained and incorporated from an outside source. This exercise will look at the first step in obtaining material from outside: locating resources. Although there are a variety of sources for computer based material, there has been a major shift towards developing and providing resources on the web. This exercise will explore how to find material on the world wide web. There are four parts to this exercise. All of the web sites referred to in this exercise have been organized on this page <http://cobweb.aecom.yu.edu/ooe/meetings/aeuce/search.html>.

I) Each participant will link to a public web search service <http://www.excite.com/> and search for reproductive pathology images. Discuss what you found with the group. What differences were there in what people found?

II) Each participant will search for a topic from the list below.

Name of participant	Search Engine	Search
1) Antonio Cajigas	<http://www.excite.com/>	for ozone effects on DNA
2) Susan Coupey	<http://www.altavista.com/>	for adolescents and contraception
3) Adrienne Fleckman	<http://www.lycos.com/>	for ketoacidosis
4) Racheline Habousha	<http://www.med-library.com/>	search for 3D cardiac movies
5) Dale Hochstein	<http://www.hotbot.com/>	search for medical academic computing
6) Nathila Isaac	<http://www.yahoo.com/>	for histology images
7) Albert Kuperman	<http://www.webcrawler.com/>	for pharmacokinetics
8) Frank Lowy	<http://www.hotbot.com/>	for gram stain images
9) Dan Myers	<http://www.medmatrix.org/index.asp>	for interviewing
10) Astrid Quish	<http://www.goto.com/>	for pituitary pathology
11) Dan Rauch	<http://medworld.stanford.edu/medbot/>	for pediatric asthma
12) Steve Roderick	<http://www.infoseek.com/>	for methionine aminopeptidase
13) Peter Schmidt	<http://www.acsiom.org/nsr/neuro.html>	for pathology pineal gland
14) Jane Wachs	<http://www.medmatrix.org/index.asp>	for scleroderma
15) John Wexler	<http://www.goto.com/>	for radioisotopes
16) Edward Yellin	<http://www.infoseek.com/>	for cardiovascular modeling

Discuss what you found with the group. Are some subjects covered better than others? Are some search sites easier to use than others? Are some sites more focused than others? Did non-medical search sites uncover information that was not available at medical search sites?

III) Each participant will search for a topic of your own choosing at site(s) of your own choosing. Discuss your results.

IV) Prepare a summary presentation of what your group learned for presentation to the entire group. Possible topics include: What search strategies were successful? What search sites where easiest to use? What search sites were most successful in finding relevant material? What sites eliminated bad matches? What topics were easiest to find? What types of material (e.g. images, text, simulations) were easiest to find?