Problem Based Learning

Internet Reserach

Internet Research

The Internet has transformed research into a largely independent pursuit. Gone may be the chat a parent would conduct on the car ride to the library or what librarians call the in-person ?reference interview,? where an information professional intervenes to help a student assess a problem, focus a topic, suggest keywords, suggest a critical book, or recommend the best index or database in which to begin a search. Student independence is something we promote and can celebrate at many points in the research process, but adult intervention is critical. Even the brightest of our 17-year olds don?t know what they don?t know (e.g., the keywords associated with a specialized field the historical context for an event, the seminal works or classics in an area of knowledge).[i]

Good researchers not only have specific skills, but also a set of attitudes and behaviors that promote success. In terms of cognitive abilities, the information-fluent student:

? Knows what he or she is looking for

? Realizes he or she has search choices

? Recognizes research holes

? Knows basic strategies for evaluating sources

? Recognizes that searching on the

? Knows that advanced search screens exist and offer greater searching power

? Knows that there are three main types of searching: keyword, subject/topic, and field searching

? Knows how to think about a query

? Knows when quality matters

This article hits home to me because more and more so much of our time is spent using the internet to do research. In my classroom I show two different movies starting in the sixth grade on how to do internet research effectively. I am going to incorporate this article into my lesson plans because I think it hits on all the right topics for good internet research.

I try and teach my students that as they progress through high school and college it will become increasing important to develop internet research skills because locating, recognizing, and effectively using information are critical life skills they are going to need to stay competitive.

I use several different lesson plans that require students to research the internet and provide back to me in a word document their finding. The key here is to develop the lesson plan so that students can not just cut and paste and have to find the subject matter, read the subject matter, and in their own words report what they have read.

I also use this to explain that keywords are beneficial when searching within designated fields of databases. For instance, looking for keyword in a title or abstract might be more meaningful than looking for that same keyword in an article?s full text. When a student learns how to construct a query, he or she knows how to formally pose a question to a search box, making use of its syntax, or special language. As the eighth grade computer test becomes more and more geared toward database and spreadsheet usage, the quicker the student can query the information the less time they will spend on that particular problem.

Posted at 06:06PM Nov 29, 2006 by LASKIN, RICHARD in General  |  Comments[20]