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Subject Refinement Menu

As an updated replacement of the Cross-Curricular search, netTrekker has seamlessly integrated our curricular taxonomy with our Search Results pages. With our Subject Refinement Menu feature, students and teachers can take full advantage of our curricular taxonomy within the Search Results page. It combines the speed of the Keyword Search and the power of the Subject Search. Whenever you type in a keyword and receive the netTrekker search results, the Subject Menu allows you to see the subject areas that contain those resource links. Highlighting choices within the Subject drop-down menu allows you to immediately refine your search results to the curricular topic selected. Students and teachers quickly find the results that match their specific needs.

Here's how to use the Subject refinement menu:

 

•Type in a Keyword
Type a word or words describing your topic into the Keyword Search box, located at the top of any search page, and click .

Example of the Keyword Search Box:

 

•Refine Your Subject
Your keyword search has drawn results from all the places in netTrekker d.i. which matched your search term. Once you have seen the full results, you may decide that you would like only those results which come from a specific subject area. To get those narrower results, click on the menu. If the results in your original search come from several subject areas, those areas will be listed in a drop-down menu. Clicking on one of those subject areas will reduce your search results to only those from that subject area. You can contintue to drill down in the Subject menu to find more specific areas where your topic is found. Clicking on any of these will reduce your results further. The number in parentheses following the subject indicates the approximate number of search results you will receive when you click on that subject. Those results may be from that specific subject or any of the subjects listed under it.

If you decide you have narrowed your search too much, you can click on the subject that appears at the top of the menu to take you up a level. If you want to choose another curricular subject area, e.g. switch from Science to Language Arts, just click on to return to your original drop-down menu. You will not need to repeat your original keyword search.

Example of Using the Subject Refinement Menu:


• Let's say you want information on the Apollo space missions and you begin with a keyword search for "apollo." You receive a Search Result of over 190 websites and the first several describe sites dealing with myths about Apollo. While these fit your keyword search of "apollo," they clearly aren't what you are looking for if you are interested in the space missions.


 

• If you then click the Subject menu, you can choose Science from the drop-down menu to limit the subject area from which you will receive results. This will bring you closer to the results you really want.


 

• Click on Science to see which areas of netTrekker d.i.'s Science curricular taxonomy contain sites about Apollo (see A in illustration below). You may choose to drill further down the menu to Space Exploration as the area most likely to contain websites about the Apollo missions.

  
  

  You can also follow the taxonomy string above the Search Result bar (see B in the illustration above) as a different way of understanding where the websites are placed in the curricular taxonomy.

• Once you have narrowed your subject as far as you would like, just click anywhere in the white space of the Search Result page to close the Narrow Your Subject menu. You will then have access to all the websites in that area of the taxonomy which match your original keyword search.

•Viewing a Website
Click one of the links on the Search Results page to go to that website. Note that the site opens in a different window so that you can keep the netTrekker d.i. Search Results page available.

If your search resulted in more than one page of Search Results, use the page number links or "next >" and "< previous" links at the bottom of the Search Results page to move from page to page.