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One of the challenges facing us all as learners and teachers
is the efficient use of the internet for research, whether for school or for personal purposes. Librarians and other
academicians are still in the process of agreeing on how internet sources should be cited in a bibliography. Students are
faced with a bewildering mix of similar-looking information from sources that range from the impeccable to the irresponsible.
Like the answer that appears magically in the calculator display, the information that a search turns up may or may not be
accurate. We all have the opportunity to become publishers and perhaps proselytizers with (theoretically) a worldwide
audience and no guiding hand of an editor or peer review committee to keep us in check. We all know that pornography, violence, and hatred are
rife on the internet, and so do most of our students. We look constantly for ways to protect our children from these things
and to teach them to protect themselves. But there is also intellectual danger in abundance. As we use the internet
in the classroom, we are trying to teach students not only how to search but how to evaluate what they find. This is a difficult
job, even for well-educated adults. There are no easy formulas for evaluation, especially in a field in which we are not expert.
Not every article you find on the Internet has come from a reliable source. Not everything that seems to be based at a university
website is the result of good scholarship -- some of it is inaccurate or biased work posted by students, for example. We are
developing ways to help students take a careful view of what they turn up, but I think there is more need than ever for adult
assistance as middle and upper school students use the internet as a source of information. Perhaps the best guideline right
now is to check online information against print sources, which are also not necessarily reliable or accurate but which are
more likely to have passed through editor's hands and peer review of content. When your child uses the internet for research
or any other school project, we expect to see the source cited somewhere in the results -- not just a general term such as
"the internet" or "Yahoo" but the actual web page (URL) from which the material came. You may need to help your child find
that information, and we'll be happy to help you if it seems bewildering to everyone at your house. Just give us a call with
your computer connected to that web page. A note about Wikipedia -- Although it may sound and look like an online encyclopedia,
it is not -- not in the customary sense. Wikipedia is a "collaborative online encyclopedia" founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger,
a philosophy lecturer at Ohio State University, and Jimmy Wales, an Internet entrepreneur. Wikipedia's content is continuously
created and amended by users all over the world who write and edit the entries more or less as they wish. Under most circumstances,
they can change and edit existing entries. This is not comparable to Grolier Online or any of the other encyclopedias
that are -- at least in theory -- written by experts in their field and held to the same standards of accuracy and scholarship
as any other reference publication. Contributors to the Wikipedia are supposed to adopt a "neutral" point of view. However,
they do not need to demonstrate that they have the credentials to ensure the validity and accuracy of their contributions,
and they do not always remain neutral. For these reasons, we actively discourage our students from using this or any similar
site as a resource for their investigations. Older students could probably do research elsewhere and then go to non-professional
sites such as this one and evaluate the information. Most of our fifth and sixth graders are not ready to do this.
If your child is doing a research project that includes working
time at school as well as at home, it is tremendously helpful for your child to print out material from the internet at home
and bring that material to school to use as the basis for taking notes. Although we now have broadband service in the classroom,
we are dealing with some glitches that can disrupt connectivity, and -- even when everything is working well -- classroom
time is better spent getting help with note-taking skills than in finding the site again and waiting for things to print.
CD encyclopedias can provide an excellent bridge for
students between print and online content. Most are inexpensive and contain a link to the internet for updates and for related
sites. We strongly recommend World Book for students this age. Encarta is filled with entertaining bells and whistles, and
Britannica is dense with information. Both are now designed with 2 or 3 different levels of content difficulty. Although "Encarta
for Kids" is poorly organized and lacking in substantive content, the 3-level structure of Britannica is well-designed. When
resources are written at a reading level that many elementary and middle school students cannot manage independently, this
frequently leads them to lift whole paragraphs of text verbatim without any real understanding of what those paragraphs mean.
Recent editions of Encarta and Britannica are often offered at a deep discount from such vendors as Software Blowouts. Below are some sites that we have found useful at home and
in the classroom. If you find any "dead" links in this list or if you have any that you would like to recommend, please let
us know. And remember, the most effective content filter you can provide is your own involvement and vigilance when your
child is online. Time For Kids Homework Helper Researchpaper.com eLibrary Research search any topic using a database of magazines, newspapers, books, and more |
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