On Tuesday October 20th I attended the Using and Evaluating the Net for Research for my Academic Enrichment Workshop. Unfortunately there weren’t enough seats at the workshop so I was forced to stand. The workshop itself was very informative. The speaker did his best to speak as loud as possible without trying to disrupt the other people in the library. He spoke clearly and was easy to understand which made the workshop quite pleasant. Besides being well spoken, the crowd was patient, and refrained from being a nuisance.
The workshop covered how to check the validity of a website, using “and or or”, narrowing searches by context, and searching through sites by .gov. The workshop at the start was a little slow because he covered the basics of searching which I already knew. However, as the workshop continued he started getting in more depth on how to fine tune your search. The most important thing I probably learned from the workshop was the use of quotations. Quotations help tell the search engine exactly the phrase you are looking for in a specific order.
As the workshop came to an end we have to rate the workshop which I thought was well informative, followed by an organized book signing. Overall the workshop was a positive experience for me. I would recommend it to people who are interested in learning how to optimize their searches, however it can be quite dull if you already know everything the speaker is talking about.