ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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Finding Useful Sites on the Web

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[ bird caws ]

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How do you know if a website is relevant to you?

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You know, the first thing you need to do is just,

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as you said, don't waste your time

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even clicking on the things that aren't relevant.

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When you do your Google search,

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if something comes up and it doesn't have

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the words you're looking for in it,

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just don't click on it.

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Don't go down the rabbit hole.

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You will be able to tell pretty quickly

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if something's gonna be relevant.

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But what we're really talking about here is

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how you know once you've clicked

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if the page you're looking at is gonna help you.

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You can't spend your time

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reading every word of every page you click on.

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Or you'll waste your entire time

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and won't have any time to do your actual research.

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So what you need to do is look for clues.

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What's the title of the page? Does that seem relevant?

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Then scan it through and there should be headers.

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You'll see -- Go onto any page on Shmoop

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and every few paragraphs there's a header

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that kind of tells you what's coming next.

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That's how you can say,

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"Oh, okay, yeah. This is a page on Thomas Jefferson.

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But it doesn't have exactly the information I'm looking for

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because the headers are "Birth and Early Career"

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and I'm looking for information about his death."

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Or something like that.

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So really just doing a quick scan first

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and seeing what the headers are, what the key words are.

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Skim the page. See if you can

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check out by organization if it's gonna have

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the information you're looking for.

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And if it doesn't, just skip it.

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Just move on and find something else.

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[ pen writing ]

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How can you tell if a website is relevant at all?

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What are some clues?

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Brought to you by Blue's.

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Is it worth doing a quick scan before reading?

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Like, come on, people.

Full Transcript