Technology Integration

Part 2: Resources (Page 2 of 4)

Building Internet, Search and Citation Skills

Technology Integration is a four part series on essential questions, technology integration resources, web page design, and multimedia in projects.  Sections contain relevant opening essays and resources.

• Part 1: Essential Questions

• Part 2: Technology Integration Resources

  Tech Resources (Page 1): General Resources

  Tech Resources (Page 2): The current page has subsections:

  • Build your Internet Skills

  • Locating, Evaluating, and Citing Information  including some Web 2.0 resources that make conducting research easier. 

  Tech Resources (Page 3): Online Student and Computer Safety (with software suggestions)

  Tech Resources (Page 4): Grants, Other Funding, Grant Writing, and Free Resources

• Part 3: Web Page Design

• Part 4: Multimedia in Projects

Build your Internet Skills

 

How strong are your technology skills? According to Bernie Poole (2006), every teacher should possess six basic technology skills: Ability to use productivity tools (i.e., word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software such as PowerPoint, drawing) Ability to troubleshoot basic computer problems that occur in classrooms Knowledge of where to go for technical assistance Knowledge of what is available on the Web for learning in their subject area Good Web-searching skills Openness to using new technologies Identify your strengths and weaknesses, then set your personal technology implementation goals with MyTarget, a free online self-assessment measurement and analysis tool via the Corporation for Educational Technology and the Indiana Department of Education.  This tool, based on rubrics that align with ISTE's NETS,  will help educators fill in knowledge gaps so that they can better integrate technology to support learning and, ultimately, improve student achievement.  You can determine your level of proficiency with technology in basic concepts/skills, personal/professional productivity skills, communication/information skills, information literacy, classroom instructional skills, educational leadership skills, integration of technology into the curriculum, distance learning, administrative leadership-technology implementation skills, and technical trouble shooting.  Educators should be aware that it might take two hours to complete this assessment.  You might wish to complete a few sections at a time.

You and your students can enhance your Internet skills with the following:

Internet Tutorials at the State University of New York at Albany address the basics of the Internet and the Web, browsers, file transfer protocol, Internet research, search engines (including Boolean searching and how to choose a search engine), subject directories, and the deep Web, capturing Web images, and more. 

Living Internet is an in-depth reference about the Internet, the Web, Email, Internet Chat, Multi-user Dungeons (MUD's), Mailing lists, and Usenet newsgroups.

NetTUTOR by N. O’Hanlon of Ohio State University is your personal guide to understanding the Internet.  Interactive tutorials address such topics as getting started on the Web, the basics of Web browsers and e-mail, online discussion groups, research strategies including evaluating and citing web resources, and search skills. Each tutorial can be completed in 15-30 minutes.

Online Netskills Interactive Course (TONIC) from the University of Newcastle in the UK is a free self-paced web tutorial with quizzes designed for beginners to learn about the Internet. It is also suitable for use with middle and secondary students.  You will learn concepts and features of networks of the Internet, information and resources available on the Internet, tools that provide functionality on the Internet, searching on the Internet, communication tools for use on the Internet, and about creating and publishing Web pages.

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Locating and Evaluating Internet Resources and Citation Information

Web 2.0 Tools

Before you begin your Internet research, equip students with some new online tools to make locating information and conducting research on the Web a lot easier and more productive.  They will appreciate being able to highlight relevant information on webpages and adding comments to those just as you would on paper.  Storing notes online makes them accessible from any computer, and enables sharing with others and collaboration for group work.

Answers.com for educators is a free and safe “one-stop guide to the initial research process.”  Comprehensive, authoritative facts are available on each of 4 million topics from leading publishers, with Wikipedia also a source. 

Diigo, the "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff,"  is all about social annotation. It’s also free and features “social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging [i.e., keywords for searching], full-text search, easy sharing and interactions.” Users can add highlights and sticky notes on any webpage and designate private notes or public comments. 

i-Lighter also features a tool for highlighting online text in yellow and adding your notes just as you would on paper or with post-it notes.  The free software is downloaded to your desktop and an icon displays on your browser toolbar for when you want to use the highlighter.  Folders contain your highlighted information, notes, and links back to source pages.  You can choose to make your highlights private or public. Content can also be emailed to others or posted to a blog.

Locating and Evaluating

The search process, Web page navigation, evaluation, and synthesizing information are four challenges Internet users face (Coiro, 2005). Students need to be taught appropriate strategies, particularly for evaluating the information found on a Web page.  Not everything online is 100% accurate and bias-free. Teachers can provide such assistance by modeling steps and thinking aloud as they do so.  P. Deubel would add a fifth step--students also need to learn how to appropriately cite information they find.

Step 1: Search

Locating information with keywords often involves a Boolean search using AND, OR, NOT, +, or -, for example.  When searching for exact phrases, the phrase is enclosed in quotation marks.  Internet Tutorials of the State University of New York at Albany provides excellent primers on Boolean Searching on the Internet and How to Select a Search Engine or Directory. Briefly, Boolean logic combines algebra with logic.  "AND" is associated with the concept of intersection on Venn diagrams and the word "both."  If one searches with "AND" the web pages that come up will contain both terms of the search.  On the other hand, "OR" is associated with "union" or putting things together. Searches will find web pages in which either term occurs and more pages will be found.  "NOT" excludes subsets from a search.  The symbols " +" or " -" when placed before a term within a search phrase mean "must include" and "exclude," respectively.  Use a space before the + or - followed by the key term.

A URL can reveal an initial concern about a site, as well. Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply and Questions to Ask from UC Berkeley Teaching Library will help you to understand information contained in a URL, and how to identify authenticity and credibility of web pages. 

Step 2: Navigate and Preview

After selecting a Web page, its navigation becomes important.  For previewing a Web page, Julie Coiro (2005, pp. 32-33) at the University of Connecticut suggests that teachers model seven steps accompanied by thinking aloud:

1. Read the title of the Web page and the title of the Web site.
2. Scan menu choices, running the mouse over navigation buttons or menu options to get the big picture for what is on the site.  Menus often appear down the left side or across the top of a page.
3. Predict where major links might lead and anticipate a link's path through multiple levels of the site.
4. Explore interactive features of dynamic images, pop-up menus, scroll bars that might reveal additional features at the site.
5. Look for information about the author, and when pages were last updated.  This is often found in a page "About this Site." 
6. Look for and try out any internal search engine or organizational site map.
7. Decide if the site if worth further investigation and if so, decide where to explore first.

Step 3: Evaluate

The ACTS Model (Authoritative, Current/Correct, Truthful, Supported) provides a good rule of thumb for selecting quality online resources (or more traditional print-based resources), be they web sites or literature appropriate for writing articles.  Mark Rossman (2002) elaborates on this model, primarily in terms of evaluating literature:

• AUTHORITATIVE. This suggests that the reader consider the trustworthiness of the piece. Who wrote it? How well known is the author? What type of organizational support is provided to the author? What else has been written or produced by the author? What quality control standards are evident (i.e.; has the article been subjected to a peer review)?
• CURRENT AND CORRECT. This suggests that the reviewer should look at when the article was written and should also try to determine the correctness of the material. When was it written? What are facts and what are opinions? Is it timely? Is it complete? What is the intended audience? Whose voices are being reflected?
• TRUTHFUL. This means looking at the reasonableness of the piece. Is it fair? Does it reflect differing perspectives? Is it objective? Does it present the opinions and findings of others? Is it presented in an unbiased manner
• SUPPORTABLE. The piece should be supported by data or it should clearly indicate that it is the opinion or viewpoint of the author. The reviewer of the piece should determine as well as possible if the material is supported by references. Who has written the references? Is there more than one reference in support of each statement of fact? Are all claims supported? Is there consistency among the sources? (pp. 91-92).

Students might also find out who else is linking to the site, as some sites are bogus.  Entering LINK: [web address] in a search engine such as Google will reveal this list.  Try entering the search phrase "bogus Web sites" to demonstrate to students examples of such sites, some of which look quite professional.

Step 4: Synthesize

Finally, synthesizing information is difficult to teach students.  Coiro (2005) suggests creating a Word document template for students to use in which they write their research question, then actually copy and paste the URL and relevant text from each source into this organizer.  Then students summarize that content in their own words, and provide a personal connection of how the information or new fact relates to other information they have found on the topic and how the information on each new idea changes their thinking.  Students might jot down other questions as they reflect.  Next they write their synthesis, which considers points from their sources.  Coiro states, "A good synthesis weaves together at least two of their personal impressions with at least two facts learned from their reading" (p. 35). 

Note that students can now avoid using a copy and paste technique from Internet resources to a research project.  If they use Web 2.0 tools noted above, their highlighted text and those same notes that they might have put in a Word document can be created and stored online rather than on the desktop computer.

Step 5: Cite

Students need to learn appropriate methods for citing the information they have directly quoted, summarized, or paraphrased from others.  Common methods include MLA, APA, Turabian, and Chicago.  Sites that generate citations are available to help writers put references in appropriate format.

Crediting ideas from others is part of academic integrity.  Teachers might also discuss plagiarism with their students, as sometimes students don't realize they are plagiarizing.  See Dr. P. Deubel's publication, available at CT4ME: Plagiarism: Prevention is the Name of the Game.

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Search and Citation Methodology Resources

APA Citation StyleGuide Handbook: Online Guide to Preparing Manuscripts in APA Style, from The Write Direction

APA Documentation from the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

APA Formatting and Style Guide from the OWL at Purdue University

Apaguide.net  lists APA guides and software.

APA Citation assistance from Owens Library of Northwest Missouri State University.

Duke University Library will help you to correctly cite in MLA and APA formats, create Turabian footnotes, or use the Chicago Manual of Style.

Evaluating Information Found on the Internet from Johns Hopkins University.  This article also includes how search engines return information.

Fact, Fiction, or Opinion? Evaluating Online Information from Education World contains the how to's suggested in the title. 

Four NETS for Better Searching by Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University includes: start Narrow, find Exact phrases, Trim back the URL, and look for Similar pages.

How to Cite Your Sources: First Things First! from MidLink Magazine, a digital magazine for students 8-18, sponsored by NC State University and the University of Central Florida.

NoodleTools, a suite of interactive tools designed to aid students and professionals with their online research, will help you select a search engine, find some relevant sources,  and cite those sources in MLA or APA style.  

Search Engine Showdown by Greg Notess --learn all about searching and get search engine news.

Turnitin.com contains resources for preventing plagiarism and guidelines for correctly citing information. 

University Library at California State University, Long Beach, has a complete resource on APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and other citation methodologies.

Using the Web from Eduplace.com is divided into three sections and includes  Grades 1-2: Learning from Web Sites;  Grades 3-5: Searching for Web Sites; Grade 6-8:  Evaluating Web Sites.  Each module is very engaging with appropriate animations.

Citation generators:

APA Style Helper is downloadable software to help you with headings, references, and more.

KnightCite, a project at Calvin College: APA, MLA, and Chicago styles can be generated.  Rules are included to help enter data.

Search engines for young students:

Before releasing your students to search on the Web, you might begin by reading Child-safe Searching on the Web at SearchEngines.com.  This site addresses nearly every concern you might have about search engines.

• Ask for Kids
• Awesome Library for Kids (also in several languages)
• First Gov for Kids
• KidsClick!
• Kids.Net.AU
• Yahooligans!

General and more scholarly search engines and databases:

• Academic Reference and Research Index advertises itself as a "free metasearch engine and virtual reference desk accessing tens of thousands of academic reference and research sites recommended by teachers and librarians!"
• Ask.com  Ask a question and get an answer.  This is the upscale search engine to Ask for Kids.  Search by category: web, images, city, news, and blogs.
• Dmoz "The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web."  Educators might particularly like the reference section for education.
• FirstGov the U.S. government's official web portal.
• Google Scholar will help you find "peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations."
• OAIster, a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service, contains "a collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone." Find the pearls: books, journals, images, audio files, video files, and more.
• Scirus focuses on science-specific web pages, including peer-reviewed articles, journals, and patents.
• Search.com is a metasearch engine, which means it searches dozens of search engines such as Google, Ask.com, LookSmart.

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References

Coiro, J. (2005, October). Making sense of online text. Educational Leadership, 63(2), 30-35.

Poole, B. (2006). What every teacher should know about technology. Education World.  Available: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech227.shtml

Rossman, M. H. (2002). Negotiating graduate school: A guide for graduate students (2nd Edition).  Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications. pp. 91-92.

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See other Technology Integration pages:

Part 2: Technology Integration Resources: Page 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |

Part 1: Essential Questions  |  Part 3: Web Page Design  |  Part 4: Multimedia in Projects.