Students as 21st Century Users of

Information

IPSD 204 Institute Day

February 25, 2011
Presented by Laurie May

laurie_may@ipsd.org
 CHARLOTTE DANIELSON
PROFESSIONAL FRAMEWORK

Planning and Preparation The Classroom Environment

Domain 1: Planning and Preparation

Component 1d: Demonstrating Knowledge of Resources
Resources for teaching
Resources for students
 

Instruction Professional Responsibility

THREE KEYS TO
A GREAT
SEARCH
Ask the right questions
Look in the right places
Look critically your
findings
Excerpt from Dialog Search Manual
= 20 quality results
= 1,620,000 “quality” results
 COMMON CRAFT –
SEARCH STRATEGIES
The ERIAL Project, a study conducted by 5 Illinois
universities, found that students:

 don’t know how to form a sound search query;

 don’t have a strategy for dealing with poor results;
 can’t articulate how they know content is credible;
 don’t check the author or date of an article.
(Finding Dulcinea, 2010)
 WHAT CAN WE DO?
Teach students that searching starts before they sit
down at the computer
Provide students with an arsenal of reliable
information sources
Teach students to become critical users of
information
Model these practices on a regular basis
Formulating
the Question

What’s up with
Italy that volcano in
Italy?
Natural Language
Visuvius?
Ve
Volcan Vesuvi su

i os
ev
oes us iu

uv
s?

s
Vu
Boolean Logic Pre-searching
Where do I start?

Ask, “What do I hope to find?”

 BEFORE YOU START:
Develop background knowledge
Formulate keyword list
Start your search with 2 or 3 relevant
words
Add terms to narrow the number of hits
to the most related sources
 Activity Time
Do a Google search using the search terms on your
worksheet. Write down the number of hits that you get
with each
volcano*…………………………………111,000,000
volcano …………………………………..32,800,000
volcano italy……………………………..….4,450,000
vesuvius ……………………………………2,730,000
volcano italy vesuvius ………………….………304,000
volcano italy vesuvius naples……………………
169,000
BASIC STRATEGIES:
No CAPITALS
No articles (the, a, an)
Use wildcards (Usually * or ?)
Use quotation marks to search phrases
Be systematic. Start with 2 or 3 words, then add
one at a time to narrow your topic
 Great! Now I only
have 150,000 sites to
look at!
Are you looking in the right place?
GOOGLE ALTERNATIVES
• Other search engines
• Bing
• Yahoo
• Ask
• Meta search engines
• Excite
• Dogpile
• IXQuick
EVEN BETTER:
Search Engines specifically designed for kids
 Google Safe Search
 Ask Kids
 Kids Searchalicious
 Ipl2 for Kids

Sort out the possibilities with

 NoodleTools
 Infopeople
 Activity Time
Go to some of the websites designed for kids, and take note
of which would be useful in your classroom. Rate them
using the following criteria:

Ease of access
Ads or No Adds
Reading Level
Kid Appeal
Information overload!
 For young or
inexperienced users, a
search engine is
probably not the best
path.
What are the alternatives?
Pre-selected sites (Teacher marked
favorites/bookmarks)
Database such as Nettrekker or Kids Infobits

Let’s try our volcano

search on
Nettrekker…
 Activity Time

• Go to Nettrekker at http://school.nettrekker.com
• Log in as: wattslibrary
Password: wolverines
• Search volcano vesuvius on the middle tab and fill out
your worksheet.
WHO DO YOU TRUST?
 EVALUATING
RESOURCES
Can you trust the information you
find on the Internet?
…Maybe
Sea Da
Wi
rch
kip
Eng tab
edia ine ase
CLUES TO RELIABILITY
1. Author…Is he or she qualified to write about
the topic?
2. Sponsoring organization
3. Date updated?
4. Why was the site created? (Is it biased in
some way?)
5. Who is profiting from this website?
WHAT ABOUT WIKIPEDIA?

Wikipedia Beneath the Surface

Let’s take at look at Wikipedia for
ourselves…

http://www.wikipedia.org/
As you explore Wikipedia, think about…

Can students at my grade level make use of

Wikipedia?
How can they use it?
Should it be used as a documented resource?
 CAN KIDS SAFELY SEARCH
THE INTERNET?
• First search on pre-screened websites
• Databases provide focused, safe sources of
information
• Use search engines designed for kids
• District filters will block many undesirable
sites
• GoogleNothing
Disclaimer: has built in filtersor smart-kid proof!
is foolproof
This presentation was made possible by information gleaned from the
following sources:

http://charlottedanielson.com/theframeteach.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/sweetsearch/teaching-the-ten-steps-to-better-web-resea
rch

http://issuu.com/richardbyrne/docs/beyond-google-/1

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/wikipedia/

Valenza, Joyce Kasman. Super Searchers Go To School. Medford, NJ:

Information Today, Inc., 2005

For more links as well as a copy of this presentation, go to my blog at

http://21stcenturysearching.blogspot.com