Good Learning Co.
SavannahYear 8
← Computing
ComputingIT skills20 min★★ difficulty

Searching well and checking sources

Search engines find millions of pages in a second, but not all of them are true. Good searchers know how to find and check.

Part of your national curriculum
  • Creativity and digital literacy: Create, reuse, revise and repurpose digital artefacts for a given audience, with attention to trustworthiness, design and usability

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Create, reuse, revise and repurpose digital artefacts for a given audience, with attention to trustworthiness, design and usability

Key learning points

  • • Better keywords
  • • How results are ranked
  • • Checking a source
  • • Fake images and AI

This lesson at a glance

  • 20 minutes
  • 18 parts to scroll through
  • 4 quick checks
  • Marked quiz at the end
  • Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

createreviserepurposedigitalartefacts

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 18 · Intro6%
1

Introduction

Part 1 of 18

Searching well and checking sources illustrationVisual introduction

Picture this

Searching well and checking sources

Search engines find millions of pages in a second, but not all of them are true. Good searchers know how to find and check.

In a nutshell

Create, reuse, revise and repurpose digital artefacts for a given audience, with attention to trustworthiness, design and usability

2

What you already know

Part 2 of 18

Before we start

What you already know

You've used a search engine.

3

Key words

Part 3 of 18

Key words

Words you'll need today

keywords
The important words you type into a search.
ranking
The order results appear in, decided by the search engine's algorithm.
sponsored result
An advert paid to appear near the top.
reliable source
A trustworthy source with a clear author, date and evidence.
4

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 18

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Part 1: Better searching

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

5

Explore the idea

Part 5 of 18

Learn

Better keywords

Search 'snow leopard diet' rather than 'what do those big white cats in mountains eat'. Put "quotation marks" round an exact phrase. Add 'site:gov.uk' to search only UK government sites.

6

Explore the idea

Part 6 of 18

Learn

How results are ranked

Search engines rank pages using hundreds of signals, like how well the words match and how many sites link to a page. The top result isn't always the most accurate, and adverts are often at the very top.

7

Quick check

Part 7 of 18

Quick check

Which search is better?

8

Reset break

Part 8 of 18

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now
9

Quick check

Part 9 of 18

Quick check

Quotation marks in a search find:

10

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 18

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Part 2: Is it true?

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

11

Explore the idea

Part 11 of 18

Learn

Checking a source

Ask: who wrote it? When? Why (to inform, sell or persuade)? Can I find the same fact on two other reliable sites? Museums, universities, the BBC and .gov.uk are usually good starts.

12

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 18

Learn

Fake images and AI

Images can be edited or made by AI. Do a reverse image search, look for odd hands, text or shadows, and check whether trusted news sites report it.

13

Quick check

Part 13 of 18

Quick check

A sponsored result is:

14

Quick check

Part 14 of 18

Quick check

A good way to check a fact is to:

15

Common mix-ups

Part 15 of 18

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

  • First result doesn't mean most true.
  • A professional-looking website can still be wrong.
16

Challenge round

Part 16 of 18

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

17

Mastery quiz

Part 17 of 18

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Searching well and checking sources

3 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

  1. 1. Which question helps judge a source?

  2. 2. site:gov.uk in a search:

  3. 3. An amazing viral photo should be:

18

Lesson round-up

Part 18 of 18

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

Quiz score

Not sat

Games

Not played

Points this lesson

0

Best run

0 in a row

Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?

Ask Luna

Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Article

How a supermarket checkout knows the price

When a barcode is scanned, the checkout does not store the price itself. It sends the barcode number to a database and reads back a record: product name, price, whether it needs an age check. The record is the single place the price lives, so changing one row changes every till in the shop at once.

Problems come from bad data, not bad scanners. If two products share a barcode, or a price update reaches the shop overnight but the till holds an old copy in its cache, customers are charged the wrong amount. Shops check this with test transactions: scan a known item, expect a known price, record what actually happened.

Good systems also log every scan. If a customer complains, the log shows exactly which record was used and when.

Written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

  1. Write in your own words what the checkout sends and what it receives back.
  2. Explain one way bad data could cause a wrong price, and how logging helps find it.
  3. Design a test table with four tests for a new checkout, with expected and actual results.

  • Reading and notes

    Reading

    Read the lesson text again and note the key terms and how each one is used, in your own words — as you would for revision.

    Half a page of notes

  • Extended writing

    Writing

    Explain a real system that uses this idea — how it works, where it can go wrong, and how you would make it safer or better.

    250–350 words

  • Algorithm on paper

    Diagram

    Write your steps out as pseudocode or a flowchart before you type anything, then photograph it.

    1 flowchart or 10 lines

  • Code write-up

    Writing

    Copy your code in, then explain underneath what each part does and what you had to fix.

    Code + 5 sentences

  • Test table

    Working out

    Make a test table: what you tried, what you expected, what actually happened.

    4–6 tests

Saved as you type.

Part 1 of 18 · Introduction

How this is going

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    Create, reuse, revise and repurpose digital artefacts for a given audience, with attention to trustworthiness, design and usability

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