In Class Ideas

This activity is designed to help students understand the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT. This helps students correctly conduct more complex searches in the database environment. It also helps students understand how to use search engines on the Web more effectively.

Materials needed for this activity include a collection of beads for each group, containers for the beads, and a worksheet for use with the activity.

This activity is best spread over two class days. Most groups of students begin by sorting the beads. Students complete as much of the worksheet as they can the first day. The papers are collected and graded.

Then the graded papers are returned the second day and students are allowed to correct wrong answers. This results in thoughtful questions from students as they think through their answers. They then finish as much of the worksheeet as they can.

A spreadsheet for grading the question set is included. To correct the questions, the instructor finds each groups answers by entering the number of beads in each category as recorded by each group on their answer sheet.