Gathering

Normally when gathering information online, I go straight to google and type in exactly what I am looking for. Sometimes I even type a very specific question into google and sometimes I will find that this question has already been answered and is posted on yahoo answers and all the research that I have to do is to read what has been posted on yahoo answers. eHow.com is similar, if I ever need to find out the process of how to do something, all I need to do is check out eHow.com and most likely they will have a video or article explaining the process. If my how to question isn't clearly defined on eHow, I can probably search youtube for a good explanation as well. If I didn't ask a question or a how to directly into the search bar, I would type in a broad concept and then refine it with other words relevant to what I am looking for.

After doing some more research I learned that it is a good idea to use a number of different spellings for words that have more than one way of writing such as millennium, millennia, or millennial. It is also a good idea to write in several different names if the subject is known by alternate names, such as Peter Parker aka Spiderman. This is easy by using the boolean feature of most search engines, you can instruct the search engine to look for Peter Parker OR Spiderman and use other words too such as NOT to single out what you don't want for example Spiderman NOT movie.

I also learned that a good place to look other than a search engine is a subject directory, such as about.com. Subject directories are better when you don't have an extremely specific piece of information you are trying to find, but for example: ADD, if you want to find how to treat ADD, you can go to about.com and find a good answer, but if you want to know the statistics of how many chinese people are currently living with ADD, you would want to use a search engine.