Friday June 16, 2006
Leah Kirwan
Friday June 16, 2006
Reliable Research...
Student Research and the Internet by Amy S. Bruckman
This article in a nutshell is about helping students understand the importance and art of research and teaching them how to find the truth in articles. Student?s today just like back in the day are doing a rush job on school research papers and they still do not know how to find reliable sources or how to determine a dud article from a good article. Students will go to two maybe three websites off google and feel that have done all the research they can do. Going to the library is not part of their vocabulary and they might not even know how to use it. Students feel an encyclopedia is the only book of information in the library. In order to prepare students better for research as teachers and parents we need to teach them about research methods and discuss the differences between article A and article B. Students need to know the different between an article of opinion, a peer review and a manuscript.
This article is very insightful because after only been teaching for two years I have found that high school students today have no idea on how to conduct research for papers. This problem is only going to flow into the college systems and by then it is almost too late. In all English classes they should have a unit on how to do research and how to properly use the Internet and the library to get truthful and reliable articles. At all grade levels students should have to write a research paper on a topic of teacher choice and have so many articles to support their findings. This will allow students to go through the steps of research, writing a paper, and citing resources.
When it comes to my curriculum I am responsible for teaching my students how to create a report in Word, but not research a report. A part of the curriculum should be teaching students how to use the Internet for finding reliable resources and how to take that information and turn it into a report. In my class I take them through the steps of creating an outline, then typing the report, creating a table of contents, an index, and then a works cited page. Instead of using a generic report I should give the students a topic to research or team up with another co-worker and have students use my class time to do a History paper or English paper. Together the English/History teacher can help me teach students how to write a paper in MLA style or APA style and how to conduct reliable research by using the library or Internet. The idea is to get students off of google and get them going to academic websites to get their information. Another big thing is to teach them how to paraphrase and not plagiarize. Plagiarize is another growing issue in the school systems and possibly another topic that should taught in the school systems, but that is another topic for another time.
Posted at 07:21PM Jun 16, 2006 by KIRWAN, LEAH in General | Comments[0]
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