Online searching as apprenticeship: Young people and web search strategies

Abstract

To participate in the Information Society, it is necessary to acquire online searching skills. Despite the promise of improved searching software and the promises of instant access to information made by the search engines themselves, the process still requires human cognition. Many studies of searching behaviour have been made and are summarised along with a report of current research on group interviews with 10 year-old school children. Attitudes to searching the web and negotiating the various digital repositories of information available to them provide valuable clues about children's elearning. A significant finding was the lack of distinction made between resources held on local machines, those on the school network and those on the Internet itself. Analysed from a phenornenographic point of view, it appears that young people are concerned about protecting their own data and privacy, and often those concerns override the need to find new information. Searching was not seen as an activity in its own right; instead, young people concentrated on identifying sources that were usable in a given context. Also of importance was the role of social collaboration, both with siblings and parents, in web searching. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.