Year 9 Geography - Biomes & Food Security: Research Ready

Once you have your assessment task, the best thing to do is set up your word document.  Create a title page if required and a reference or bibliography page.  If you have an assessment task that requires you to address specific issues or questions, type these into your document.  This will help you stay focused when you commence writing.

The reference style most classes use is APA 6th.  If you locate a relevant resource within a database it will often have a 'cite' button that you can press, which will provide a reference or citation for you.  You then simply copy and paste the reference straight into your reference list and arrange the references in alphabetical order.

If you need to create a reference for a book or website, you can use 'Cite this for me'. 

If you use Google Chrome you can use Cite This For Me intuitive Chrome add-on and gain the power to automatically cite a webpage when you're actually on it! Whenever you are on a page you wish to use as a source, simply click the Cite This For Me extension button to generate a citation for it.  It's quick, easy and free! Click here to get the add-on.

HOW TO USE CITE THIS FOR ME

1. Use Safari as your web browser and look up Cite This For Me.

2. Next, choose your reference style - APA 6th

3. Select your reference type.  For example - book, website or journal and enter the resource details.

*If you have trouble accessing Cite This For Me, please follow these steps:

1. Ensure you are using Safari as your web browser.

2. Turn off 'block pop ups' in Settings

3. Turn off 'block all cookies' in Settings

4. Lastly, 'clear history and website data' in Settings

5. Try using Cite This For Me

If you require further assistance using Cite this for me, please contact library staff.

When searching for information it is important to consider what key search words and terms are going to be the most relevant to your topic.   It's a good idea to first familiarise yourself with the topic by reading your textbook or using an online encyclopedia.  During this process, it will be advantageous to consider any synonyms.  A thesaurus is an excellent tool for helping you identify synonyms.  Click here to see how many different synonyms you can find for your key search terms.  It's a good idea to start searching using a broad search term to help familiarise yourself with the topic, however, if your search returns too many results or you're looking for a more specific result, begin to narrow your search terms down.  See the table below for some examples. 

Redlands College subscribes to a number of wonderful online databases.  Specialised databases can access a far greater amount of information than just using Google and other search engines alone and are of excellent quality.  The College 'access to databases' page is password protected so please ensure you know and save the password.  Please contact the library if you need assistance (library@redlands.qld.edu.au).  Gale in Context (high school), and Britannica (high school) are the two recommended databases (at the year 9 level).

Although Google is often seen as a quick method of locating information it often brings back results in the thousands and includes sites that are not reliable or authoritative.  Sifting through all these results can be very time consuming.  Checking the site or domain URL can give you a quick idea of what type of site it is (see table above).

If searching for information on a .com, .org or .net website, be sure to use the following C.R.A.A.P evaluation criteria. 

Is the website Current? Most websites will have when they were last updated at the bottom of the page.

Is the website Relevant? Does it address your topic effectively? Is it age-appropriate for your research? Is the language appropriate? 

Is the website Authoritative? Who is the author? Are there advertisements suggesting it is a commercial site and therefore not a reliable source of information for research purposes?

Is the website Accurate? Is it reliable, correct, biased, or is there grammatical errors?

What is the website's Purpose? Is it selling to you or informing you? What are the author's intentions?

CAN I USE WIKIPEDIA? Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is quick and easy to use.  Wikipedia can be a useful tool to initially identify keywords and search terms.  References at the end of a Wikipedia page can be useful as they are primary sources. However, Wikipedia is NOT a recommended source of information for research purposes and should never appear in your reference list.  Anyone can create and edit content within Wikipedia so it is difficult to evaluate quality. 

The simplest way to do an advanced search on Google and narrow your search by domain is to type in your keywords and then add a colon (:) and .gov or .edu.  For example, if you're looking for information on world war one and you only want information from government websites (.gov), you would enter - world war one:.gov

If you only want information from educational websites such as universities you would enter - world war one:.edu

Did you know you can do an Advanced Search on Google? 

Here's how to do it on a laptop or desktop - when using Google type in your key word or search terms and hit enter (e.g: electromagnetic radiation).  Next, go to the settings drop down menu and select Advanced Search (see image above).  This will allow you to limit your results by selecting the desired language, geographical region and site or domain type (see image below).  For example, you may only want to look at educational websites with the domain .edu (.edu and .gov sites are reliable sources of information).

This is the Advanced Google search screen.

Image: https://www.google.com.au/advanced_search?q=google&safe=strict&rlz=1C1GCEB_enAU813AU813&hl=en