Access+Analyze+Information

//The best description I have heard recently is "flux and glut," which has been used in the following context: How do we find accurate, reliable information with the flux and glut of sites on the web?

We know our students can't do internet research (we'll get to that later), but we sometimes struggle ourselves. Here are a few tips that have helped me. //


 * Tip#1: Social Bookmarking for more than just Bookmarking**

There are tools out there that allow users to save favorite websites to the internet, rather than to a specific computer. This is especially helpful to those of us who have both a home and work computer. We can search on our home computer, find a great site, save it to the internet, and be able to find it on our work -- or any other -- computer. Or phone. Or other device that can get the internet.

//Tonawanda blocks most video sites, so I can't embed anything here, but if you want to see a short, fabulous video about social bookmarking, click here.//

The most popular of these sites is called Delicious. I use it, as well as another of this type of site, called Diigo. My ID on both is Erie1Shannon, in case you want to see what I'm bookmarking.



Delicious is the easiest. Diigo has more functions, including the ability to **highlight** and **annotate** websites. (Great for research!!!!)

So you can use these sites for your own use, and they work great. But you don't even have to have an account to use the site for the use I originally had in mind:

By "everyone else," I mean everyone with an account on one of these sites. Here's how it works: Social bookmarking sites are organized by tags, or key words. Anyone can "tag" a site with any words they want. A site like poets.org could be tagged by different people as "poetry" or "ELA" or "English" or "resources" or "Unit 2" or "April" or "Cool" or "Resources_for_English_12". Individuals can assign one or multiple tags to every site they bookmark. Thousands of people have already looked at thousands of sites, and they have already tagged them with key words to organize them. And YOU can look at all the sites that have been tagged by other people.
 * Instead of starting a search from scratch every time, why don't you see what everyone else has found? **

Try it. Go to Delicious.com. In the search box, type "poetry."

Delicious will spit out all the sites that all users have tagged "poetry." They will tell you how many people have bookmarked that site (red circle below), as well as other popular tags for that site (green circle).

Believe me, this has saved me time and frustration. We know from //Who Wants to Be A Millionaire// that polling the audience is always a good idea; in essence, this is polling thousands of web searchers to find which sites were worth bookmarking.

There is so much more that you can do with social bookmarking. Let me know if you want to discuss.


 * Tip #2: Google Advanced Search**

Here's something else that has saved me time: Using the advanced search feature on Google. You can do so much with this, but what I have found especially helpful is the ability to search for
 * Specific file types (like only searching Power Points or Adobe .pdfs or Shockwave (Flash) files. (red circle)
 * Copyright-free or Creative Commons media (green circle)

//So I've shared two tips for YOU, but what about the kids?

Before the comments start ("My students can't do research." "All they do is go to Wikipedia and cut and paste." "They plagiarize everything." "They spend too much time on the computer and don't find anything."), let me just say this. And know that "they" refers to most, not all:


 * You are right**. //

They don't do well with internet research. They don't know how to research. They don't know how to read, analyze, and evaluate web sites. They don't know how to skim/scan electronic text. They don't know how to quickly locate main idea on electronic text. They don't know how to identify bias. They don't know how to follow a breadcrumb trail. They don't know the difference between .org, .com, and .net. They don't know that .ca indicates a site is from Canada or that .co.uk means it's from the United Kingdom. They don't know the difference between a wiki, a blog, and a standard website. They don't know how to cite electronic text. They don't know how to save and annotate the sites they have found. They don't know how to synthesize the little they do find into a coherent argument around a thesis.

These observations are backed up by research:

........ When conducting searches on the Internet for information, children display the following ........ behavior (Kuiper, Volman, and Terwel, 2005): ........ 1. Preference for browsing rather than entering keyword(s) and conducting a search. ........ 2. Difficulty in formulating keywords for a search. ........ 3. Limited exploration; much use of well-known websites ........ 4. Little patience. ........ 5. Difficulty with large amounts of text. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">6. Tendency to focus on collecting factual knowledge rather than answering more conceptual, abstract <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">questions. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">7. Tendency to search for one correct answer. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">8. Tendency to change the search questions when the literal answer is not easily found. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">9. Little attention to reading and processing of information. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">10. Difficulty in assessing the relevance of information found on the Internet. <span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">........ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 90%;">11. Difficulty in assessing reliability of information found on the Internet.

I would encourage you to read the paper from which this research comes.

Internet research is HARD. There are quite a few skills involved, and your students need instruction -- and modeling, and practice -- on all of them. Even college-bound seniors need help with this, and your freshmen certainly do.

Yes, they have grown up with the internet, but no one has taught them how to read web sites.

Here are some more lessons/ideas for you to use:


 * Suggested Sites**
 * [|UC Berkeley's Tutorial on Evaluating Websites]
 * [|Evaluation Worksheet from Tutorial]
 * [|Evaluation Checklist]
 * Internet Public Library - A+ Research and Writing: Info Search
 * Lesson Plan: Evaluating a Website
 * Lesson Plan: Teaching Internet Research (for Middle School, but works for High School)
 * Lesley University: Criteria for Evaluating Websites
 * Suggestions for Internet Assignments from New Mexico State University Library