Boolean+Searching

Want to get your students to think about an important online search skill, as part of these activities? Boolean operators are not only important in efficient searching, but they can add another avenue to explore student thinking. For example, look at the Comparing Decimals page and consider how students could use Boolean operators as part of the activity.

Use this site to solidify their understanding of Boolean operators. []

Then encourage them to apply this kind of thinking to many activities. Questions: How could you use this kind of thinking to help you? When is using "Not" a help? How does that affect your results? How do the describing words affect this thinking? How else could you show this kind of search?

What if the student must use 2 attributes in a sort? Sorting and searching are similar activities; they both involve analyzing attributes. Sorting is organizing based on attributes. The set is known and we're categorizing. Searching is looking for something, using attributes. With a search, you'll never know (with Google, for example) the size of the pool from which you hope to draw the answer. Other ways to show - can include truth table, Venn diagram
 * Teacher thinking** about this:
 * OR gives you more results.** = more hits when searching.
 * OR** means union, you'll take anything that has **eithe**r search term.
 * AND gives you fewer results.**
 * AND** means intersection; you only want results that have **both** search terms.