Kreider's Contemplations on Teaching & Technology

lifelong learner, teacher, and geek

Better Research

Helping Students Find Quality Information and Write Better Reports

The Internet is a vast repository of information – the good, the bad, and the ugly! Discover how to guide your students to the good stuff, safely and efficiently. Help them organize information from multiple sources, validate its accuracy, and improve their writing.

View Presentation from Rialto USD Gifted and Talented Education Conference.

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Teaching Students to Search Effectively

I’ve been on the bandwagon about teaching research for years. So I’m going to start this article by quoting one of my posts from 2009.

My Research Soapbox (from 2009)

Where do you go when you want a quick answer to something? Chances are you “Google it!”  Where do you go when you want to become an expert on that topic? Typically, the answer remains the same. A recent study (no longer available online) found that “89% of college students use search engines to begin their information searches,” rather than relying on library resources. This ‘Google generation’ can quickly locate thousands of results for a given topic, but what they often fail to do is identify the most authoritative resources. They often waste time sifting through search results and getting a surface level understanding (sometimes a misguided one) instead of delving deeply into a few quality sources.

We must teach our students that researching is different than searching. Think of searching as that “gotta know now” type of question, where the most popular answer will usually do. Researching involves locating quality sources for the purpose of becoming an expert, so you can make an informed decision, solve a problem, etc. As teachers, we must take on the responsibility of guiding students to quality sources that encourage researching, not just searching.

New Thoughts:
After 16 years of teaching teachers, I have come to realize that most adults think they know how to do research online if they can get to Google, type in a keyword, and get a long list of results. That is how you find the “common” or popular knowledge on a topic, not necessarily the expert level information. A good researcher must be able to
  • select good starting points
  • narrow their search topic
  • employ a variety of search strategies to refine their results
  • evaluate the resulting links for validity and authority
  • identify or infer author’s purpose
  • locate relevant information in resulting sources
  • organize, compare and use information from multiple sources
  • cite their sources appropriately
The Common Core Standards for Reading Informational Text identify these skills beginning in second grade. It is imperative that we begin modeling at this young age how to use expert sources, think about the author’s purpose, collect and organize information, and tell where we found the information.

Some Recommendations:
  1. Realize that research is a multi-step process: Access, Evaluate, and Apply. Listen to my short pencast about this.
  2. Provide an information gathering strategy that supports collection and comparison of information from multiple sources. Listen to my pencast about the research grid and then download a copy to use with your students (pdf or MS Word format).
  3. Use expert sources. Start with the reference databases provided by the school and public library. Provide students with links to other reputable sources you have vetted.
  4. Use educational search engines. InstaGrok is an interesting one that even allows students to create a search journal to share with their teacher, check their understanding with quizzes, navigate their topic visually, and much more.
  5. Use subject-specific search engines such as Scirus.com for scientific information and Google Scholar (preview results to assess reading level).
  6. Get educated about searching! Check out Google’s Education resources including the live trainings link where you can view videos about effective search strategies.
  7. Explore an Evaluating Sources presentation Judy Bryson and I created after attending a Google workshop.
  8. Have some fun tricking your kids with spoof sites such as allaboutexplorers.com to teach them to validate their sources.
  9. Try out the CyberSMART lesson plans to teach students research skills.
  10. Teach the process, not just the product. Research is not something students should do independently and then turn in a report a week or month later. Model, guide, and monitor their process every step of the way from planning their research, to conducting research, to gathering their information.  Consider having the research grid be the final product, using it to participate in a group or class discussion rather than requiring a formal piece of writing every time. This will allow you multiple opportunities to refine their research skills before delving into the writing skills. If they don’t have good research, they can’t write well, so get this first piece mastered through multiple learning opportunities before you move on to the writing component.

And finally, please teach your students to always, always, always cite their sources! Model this in everything you do – pictures in your presentations should have citations, etc. You can teach them to copy-paste the URL for an informal citation or generate MLA formatted citations using a citation machine such as NoodleTools Lite or BibMe (warning, this one asks for personal information to create an account).

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