Too often, when we teach research skills to students, we focus on articles, blogs, Wikipedia, and other resources. However, many of our students are getting their news and politics and other information through social media. We need to include analysis of social media posts and tips and tricks for validating information on social media just as we do for traditional websites.
My 6th graders are in the middle of building wikis about a topic of their choice. It has been a journey of learning how to evaluate sites, how to locate information, how to bookmark sites using Diigo and take notes with the highlighting feature. They have learned how to create a wiki and plan out…
As my 4th graders begin their research projects we have been discussing and experimenting with keywords. Today they put together a list of questions about their topic (a famous African American) to prepare for starting their research. I gave them a choice of how they listed the questions. I modeled the list method and the…
I have been fighting filtering battles ever since I first entered a computer lab as a technology teacher almost 4 years ago. Today I got my vindication. I am lucky that my new school does not block YouTube. My 6th graders are doing research projects that will culminate in them creating a Google Site about…
My last post, Research: One of the Hardest Things You’ll Ever Do, was a reflection on a lesson with my 6th graders about evaluating sites. I shared it with my network on Twitter and was met with some dialogue about my choice of “Is it a blog?” as an evaluation question. Here is some of…
My 6th graders are about to embark on a journey for the next few weeks. While it may seem like an exaggeration, I tell them that “research is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.” Even as an adult, I find this statement is only a slight exaggeration. They will be completing their first…
Yesterday, I attended a Classroom 2.0 and Future of Education webinar called “Google Research and Google Web Search Curriculum,” presented by Lucy Gray, Cheryl Davis, Kathleen Ferenz and Dan Russell. It was like a crash course in best practices for searching Google, and the session was extended by about 30 minutes to include a quick…