Teaching Web Searching in Your Business Writing Classes

Nov. 28, 2010 - PRLog -- Web Search is an online search tool developed by Bovée & Thill that enables instructors to have 334 search engines at their fingertips for quick, comprehensive searching online. As a business writing instructor, you'll want to discuss this search tool with your students.

The tool uses a simple, attractive, intuitive interface, engineered to help instructors find precisely what they want, whether it’s PowerPoint files, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, or Excel files.

Users can also search for academic content or instructional assistance, or search online libraries, news sites, newspapers and magazines, newsletters, blogsites, the blogosphere, forums and groups, wikis, reference, government, information about people, social bookmarking sites, press releases, company information, photographs, videos, videoblogs, podcasts, or RSS newsfeeds.

The tool also includes major search, metasearch, visible search, invisible web search, and social bookmarking search engines.

You can get to Web Search by going to http://businesscommunicationblog.com/websearch/, or you can go to the navigation bar near the top of the page at Business Communication News (http://businesscommunicationheadlinenews.com) or Real-Time Updates (http://real-timeupdates.com). Once you get to Web Search, run your cursor over the various icons under the search box. Note that each icon represents a different type of search engine. When you click on an icon, all of the search engines relating to that icon will be displayed.

Here are several situations that will help you understand how to use Web Search.

Situation 1

You’re going to be teaching about blogging in your business writing class, and you’d like to see a list of the Microsoft PowerPoint programs available for this topic.

Enter “blogging” in the search box, click on the “File Type” icon (first icon, first row), and you’ll see a drop-down menu of search engines. Click on “Google: Microsoft PowerPoint.” The result will be a list of all of the Microsoft PowerPoint programs currently available on the web on the topic of “blogging.”

You can drag and drop the program files of your choice from the search page onto your desktop.

Situation 2

You’re teaching about podcasting, and you’d like a list of online videos.

Enter “podcasting” in the search box, click on the “Videos” icon, and you’ll see a drop-down menu of video search engines. Click on the search engine of your choice. The result will be a list of the online videos about podcasting. If you don’t find what you’re seeking with the first search engine you selected, choose another search engine until you’ve found the videos that suit your needs.

You can drag and drop the online video files of your choice from the search page onto your desktop.

Situation 3

As you begin the report-writing section of your business writing textbook, you want your students to learn how to do research about companies. Your assignment is to have them select a publicly traded company and write a one-page paper about the company. You should ask your students to do the following:

Enter the query (such as “Xerox”) in the search box, click on the icon, “Companies.” A drop-down menu will show search engines for locating company information. Students should click on the search engine of their choice. The result will be information about Xerox. For additional information about Xerox, students should use the remaining search engines.

Students can drag and drop the files of their choice from the search page onto their desktops.

You can make your business writing class more valuable by sharing these search secrets and by using a high-quality business writing text by Bovee and Thill, published by Pearson Prentice Hall.

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