Search
For your convenience, the Community contains a search facility to locate information or resources. This section provides instructions for using the search option and information regarding the search engine's capabilities.
Using the Search Facility
Click the "Search" link in the sidebar on the left side of your screen.
Type your search terms into the text box.
Click one of the buttons below the box to focus your search.
Choose the number of search results to display (5 to 100).
Click the "Search" button.
The search engine locates all items that contain one or more of the words as typed in the search box. For example, searching for "write" will not match "writing," but searching for "process" will match "processing". To match all variations of a word, such as "write," try searching for just part of the word. Searching for "writ" will match "writ," "writing," "write," and "written."
Limiting the Search
Home Room Only
This feature searches your home room only and looks for your search terms in the titles, text, and author's name in both topics and responses.
Communities Only
This searches all of the public communities regardless of whether you are a member or not. This search looks for your search terms in:
Titles, text, and authors of topics and responses;
Titles, text, and authors of published and unpublished stories and comments on stories;
Titles, descriptions, and authors of published and unpublished lesson plans, and titles, text, and authors of comments on lesson plans;
Titles and text of Q&Rs that have been answered publicly.
When you do a community search, the system separates the results into four categories: community of practice, classroom story, q&r and lesson plan.
If you are a member of a private community (for example, the community Facilitators, Trainers, and/or Administrators communities), the search facility looks in that private community as well.
Library Only
This searches the Community's Library, including published classroom stories and lesson plans and all library documents.
When you search the Library, the system separates the results into four categories: classroom story, q&r, lesson plan, and library documents.
Joined Only
This searches only your home room and the Communities of Practice (both public and private) you have joined. Very similar to the communities-only search, this search excludes communities that you have not joined.
When you search your joined communities, the system separates the results into six categories: home room, community of practice, classroom story, q&r, lesson plan, and library.
Search All
When you choose to search all, the search facility searches all of the above.
In this case, the system separates the results into six categories: home room, community of practice, classroom story, q&r, lesson plan, and library documents.
NOTE: When you choose the number of results to display, the system displays up to that number of search results in each category. For example:
With 3 categories, choosing 5 results in a library search could result in up to 15 displayed results, choosing 20 could result in up to 60 displayed results, and so on.
Each time you perform a search, the system saves your search results until you perform a new search. Clicking the "Search" link on the sidebar reproduces your last search. The system retains these settings until you logout.