As a teacher, choosing web-based material that is appropriate for use with your students can be a daunting task. Don't even mention the apprehension that teachers feel when sending students to research controversial topics that are appropriate and essential to the learning of teens and young adults. The best thing that you can do as a teacher is to do research yourself so that you are familiar with what student will encounter when they venture out. Teach them how to use good searching techniques using phrasing or Boolean Logic. See this website for more information.
Another way to scaffold for students so that they don't spend wasted time researching is to create a list of web resources for your students from which to jump-off. This list can be created on a classroom website, or a free internet portal such as Portaportal, and My Bookmarks Online. You could also create a Wiki that student could use a jump-off for research. One that is free and easy is PBWorks.
Another issue that teachers encounter is not having access to the same resources at home and at school. If you plan to use web-based resource with your students, be sure to try it out at school, on the computer that you will use for the lesson. If you don't you could run into the problems of being blocked by the school firewall, or not having the software needed to run the web resource. The most important thing that a teacher can do is preview, preview, preview before using Internet resources with your students. Preparing for technology integration increases the likelihood of successful implementation.
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Hi Paulette!
ReplyDeleteI have used Portaportal for years, and love many things about it. 1) It's free! 2) Easy for teachers to set up, 3) You can organize it like files in a folder, 4) Student-friendly. What I don't like about it is the advertisements at the bottom and left sidebar on the page. I do need to learn more about this Diigo site (http://www.diigo.com/) that CUIP keeps pushing.
I completely agree with the "preview, preview, preview" advice that you give. Technology is always going to surprise you and a mishap can always happen, but this can be minimized if we as educators are better prepared and have tested resources they want to use in advance.
Great blog, keep it up!
Hi Paulette,
ReplyDeleteI wish I would have known about the "Learn the Net" website link you provided above earlier! I am constantly searching for ways to introduce proper web searching for students. My pet peeve is when students go to a search engine such as ask.com and type in the exact question they are researching such as "What is the difference between a dependent and independent variable?" I plan on spending the first month or so teaching my fifth graders how to conduct web searches with many of the different techniques outlined in the website. I think it is important to note that you do not necessarily have to have kids in front of their very own computer to teach them how to search the web. In fact, I think they focus better when they are not trying to learn something new in front of the computer. Instead I plan to give them questions (such as What is the difference between a dependent and independent variable?) on a piece of paper and have them list only 2-4 words that they can use to research the question. Later, once the idea has set in, you can have them perform the search on the computer.
Thanks!
Mandy
You're exactly right Mandy. Students do not need to be in front of their own computer to learn to search. It is something that a Language arts teacher can incorporate into a whole group classroom lesson. The teacher could demonstrate how to pull key words from a research question and how use alternate words for searching. This is a much better way to "teach" searching, by modeling.
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