Essential Digital Skills Level 1

111 videos, 7 hours and 55 minutes

Course Content

Searching the internet

Video 48 of 111
8 min 10 sec
English
English

One of the main things you want to do with a computer is searching the internet. So there are lots of different programs you can run on your computer to then search the internet. These are things like Google have one. We have got, Edge on the Microsoft computers. You have Safari. Lots of different programs to actually access the internet. So the first thing you need to do is call up the program you are using. So what we are going to use on this one is Google Chrome. The next thing you want to do is look at the search engine. Now search engine is often set as a default on your computer, so when you first get your computer, it's probably got a search engine defaulted onto it. It may well be Google or Edge, depending on which type of computer you have. You can always change that in the settings, but we will look at that on other videos. Now, the first thing you need to do is decide what search engine you are using.

Now, Google is the most popular one of them, so we are going to use that in this example here. What we have got on the screen here is a window we have called up our Google Chrome, as you can see there, it's highlighted because it's Google Chrome. And we are just gone to Google on the page. And it's defaulted onto this, but you can also just manually type "Google" and you will get straight into the search engine. Now, with this one, you can also log in so that you have got all your settings are kept on there. So if you have got browsing history, settings within your account, you can do that. But what we are going to do now is just search on Google without logging in, just so you can see how it works.

Now, the key thing with searching is to make it as simple as possible. Now, if you are looking for something absolute, so for example here, we are just going to put in, ProTrainings. ProTrainings Europe Limited. So we just literally, I know that I want to go to the absolute company. So you see it's come up there as a suggestion, so I'm just going to click on that and that's come up directly with our website, and also on the right side of the screen where you will see our Google page, Google my business page. This is a search that's quite straightforward because I've just, all I want to do is I want to know the name... I know the name of the company and I want to find out about that company. So literally the first page that comes up on Google, Pro Trainings and then lower down, there are lots of other listings which are all about our company, and this will go on for many, many pages.

So, this is a simple way of searching for something that's unique and it's just one thing. But if I wanted to search a more general thing, so maybe into the box here, I'm just going to highlight that and delete it, and I want to search on here "pets" for example. Now when you search for pets you get all sorts of different things up. It's a very, very general search term. So if I want to find something particular about a dog or a breed of dogs or feeding your dog. On here you will see, I've got all sorts of stuff. I've got companies selling pet foods, I've got a map showing all my local pet stores, I've got images, videos that are out there as well. And then lower down we get more websites, Wikipedia which we will talk more about in other videos which is like another method of finding information. And it goes on and on, and I can go for page after page after page. So one example here, I'm just going to jump to page nine on Google, these first ones here are just adverts. There are, companies that will actually pay to have their listings up here but you see now, we have got missing pets, we have got some... Quite a lot of local stuff here because we are filming this at the minute in Colchester. So a lot of the stuff would come up from the local area.

So if we go down here, pet insurance. So if you want to tailor that down a little bit more, and we want to be looking at something a lot more unique to do with a problem, you might want to say... Talk about what well dog breeds are there. So what we can do then is just highlight here, we can delete the text that's in there, write dog breeds and then it comes here with a whole long list of images, there are pictures here, there are different websites about Kennel Club, again Wikipedia and different things on here and also pages about dog breeds on other websites, for example here, the RSPCA have got a page about dog breeds. So if you want to go to anything you can just click on this where it's lit up in blue, you see that line appears underneath as I put the mouse over it. I click on it, and that will take me to the page regarding dog breeds on the RSPCA website. As you can see here, there are lots of different breeds if I want to know all about a different type of dog. For example, here it's the Cocker Spaniel. I can go straight onto that, see a picture of the Cocker Spaniel, find out all about the breed and things like that as well. Now if you want to go back to the Google search engine you can either re-type Google in, or as I haven't really gone that far I can just use the back button and go back on to the search engine, and it's on there.

So that's a simple way of looking at how to search on a search engine like Google. Just remember that the key thing is that if you want something that's exact then put as much in there but keep it short, you don't want to have a whole massive long sentence there. You just want to be able to get the key information. So if you want to know about, the... How do I feed my Labrador dog? That will be a search term you could use, and that's then... You will hopefully get data coming up just for the feeding of that particular breed of dog. We can also look on here, searching for something exact. We could say "What is the exchange rates" so we can look down here, you see we just put the word. Literally, just four letters in and it's come up with an exchange rate. We have got an exchange rate from the Pound to the Euro, so we want to do that. We can here, we can see the exact exchange rate now, but also just down here, let's zoom that in, you can see what the exchange rate is as of today and also you can do a converter. So if you want to convert £100, it's going to be worth, today's rate, €117.39. So you can do simple things like that.

So another thing you can do if you want to find where you are going, you can put a postcode in. So, here what we are going to do is just put our postcode in, 038PH and if we hit Return then it comes up with a map on the right-hand side here, and it will show us exactly where. So if I just click on that map, it pops up a map and it will show you on here exactly where that postcode is and this is just here, where our offices are. And over on the left-hand side, you can also set... Share the information, you can get directions and things like that. But just if you want to find out where something is, just put your postcode in there. The other thing with the postcode is you can enter it in and find what that is. So there's lots and lots of programs or websites down here that will tell you where that postcode is, so rather than look on a map if you want to find out other information or what business are within that postcode, it will show there. Similarly, you can do things like searching for a phone number, so if you put a phone number into Google then Google will search it and it will give you an idea of who's phone number that is. It doesn't always work, because a lot of numbers are X-directory, but it will give you a general idea.

It will definitely tell you where something actually is. So if you are not sure where a phone number is from, so you have seen it on your mobile and you have got on through, so if you are looking at say 01227 already down here you can see its area code. So we want to know what that is, so we click dialling code here. And we will find out that the 01227 number is actually in the Canterbury area. So you can see that the phone number that you have dialled is from Canterbury. So if you know someone who's called in from Canterbury or might just be a sales call or something like that. So with Google, this is just really really basic stuff but, you can very easily find information. So the thing to do is have a go, look up websites, do some searches and see what information you can find. There is a whole host of information out there, you just need to have a look.

Learning Outcomes:
  • EDSQ Unit 1 LO 2.1
  • EDSQ Unit 1 LO 2.2