After reading "Making Sense of Online Text" by Julie Coiro, I will definitely spend more time explaining to my students how to find the information I want them to get for their projects.
I have a senior Physiology class which I brought to the computer lab last week. I feel they could have used a lesson in "how to search for what you really want." As an example, they are researching cell parts. They will make a 3-D model and orally explain their part's structure and function to the class. The term "homeostasis" is used in Physiology a lot. It refers to a process in the body which maintains balance - balance of fluids, balance of temperature, balance of molecules such as carbon dioxide or glucose. So a part of their project is to see what role their particular cell part plays in homeostasis. So many students typed "what role does X play in homeostasis?" into the search box of Google. They were disappointed to find that most of the sites were "Answer Bag-type" sites. At least they knew that they couldn't trust the answers...
I never thought of teaching students about navigating within a site. In some ways I think I would be insulting their computer knowledge, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to go over it. I really liked the chart about validity which has students think about whether it makes sense, where else they can look, what links to it, who made the site and why. I will use this in my next project.
I will be more specific about how they should search for what they need to answer. I have designed most of my projects in an outline which the students have to gather information from various places but can not simply cut and paste a paragraph from a website hoping the answer is there.
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Dena Johnson and Luisa Conroy are the only teachers who have posted so far so I will be late with one of my comments. I did comment on their blogs and appreciate Luisa's concerns about making sure we have the skills before teaching the kids. I thought Dena had a great idea to tell the students to use .edu and .gov sites for their research.
ReplyDeleteHi Colleen! You should try having your students doing research through the school databases. I don't know what you have at Jefferson--we have the student resource center and many other data bases that help students with their research in all subject areas. If you don't subscribe, you can use the public library (plsinfo.org) and click on "read it online". There you will find many reliable places for your students to go to get information--but they need a library card to get in. See you soon!
ReplyDeleteHi Colleen, I also feel a little funny about telling my students how to search the web because many times it seems like they know as much or more than us teachers and I don’t want them to feel like I am teaching the obvious (well at least obvious to them) but this article did convince me that some guidance can be useful. With high school students I think I would have to be careful how I presented the lesson so as to not make them think I was talking down to them. I think that showing them how certain words used in what seems like a logical search can present very unuseful results.
ReplyDeleteI also posted a comment on Lynn's blog.
ReplyDeleteHi, Colleen. I like what you said about not insulting students. However, in my experience, whenever I assume all my students know something, there is a group that doesn't. i.e. "In what century was World War II?" So I preface it with, "This is probably review for most of you." I think most of them do not know how to research a site as shown in Figure 2. That is invaluable.
ReplyDeleteAh this is some really interesting conversation.
ReplyDeleteI have posted comments and got a message saying that my comment would not be visable (until it was validated or something like that) so I do not know if my comment actually posted or not.
ReplyDeleteThe template I plan to use is How to Synthesize Online Sources. I actually liked how it had students cut and paste and then synthesize. My Special Ed students still try to get by with cut and paste. This form holds them accountable for the steps beyond cut and paste and having these steps organized on one form . . . well, that may just do the trick!
It is nice to see you using some of the examples presented by the article with your classes. I just need to learn more before going forward. I am having my Earth Science classes use the internet to find 4 sites on 2012 and I will show them how to navigate the web. Then it is up to them to investigate the strength of the site.
ReplyDeleteHi Colleen,
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interested that you said you didn't want to insult your students' knowledge about the web. I have a feeling that many students would benefit from knowing the basic structure of a web search. If anything, you would connect with a group of students that are accustomed to "just doing without thinking." A little meta-cognition couldn't hurt them! Thanks for sharing your ideas.