Whether or not students and teachers in your classroom, building, or school district have embraced web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs and podcasts– chances are extremely high they are currently using the Internet for research projects. Digital immigrants may falsely assume that digital natives are naturally good at Internet research, but this is not generally true. In fact, some studies indicate that many kids rarely go beyond the first page of results from a simple Google keyword search!
The free, short (16 minute) digital movie, “Mission Possible: Successful Online Research” from Answers.com is a good resource teachers can use when helping students learn more effective Internet research skills. The video description from the publisher is:
Mission Possible: Successful Online Research, an entertaining and informative overview of the development of the Internet, essential research skills and most importantly, plagiarism issues. The movie comes with a complete lesson plan and follow-up activity.
Starting at about the 3 minute mark of the video, the “Search, Scribe, and Cite” model for Internet research is described. Time-wasting traps for students are cleverly categorized as “Outdated, Irrelevant, Incorrect, and Inappropriate” webpages. The following researching tips and skills are also covered: “Pre-search, TLD (top level domain) analysis (although it does not mention newer TLDs like .tv, .info, .biz, etc), objective vs. subjective source identification, pre-writing, and source citation.) This video is a good example of an effective digital story using narration voice-overs and still images. No video footage is actually used in the movie, except for some animated line drawing on a few slides. Starting at 12:50 of the movie, an advertisement for the answers.com website begins, but it does provide some good info about collaboratively edited sources like WikiPedia compared to other sources.
Two additional resources not mentioned in the video but also excellent for discussions about effective Internet searching and source citations are David Warlick’s free resource Citationmachine and Soople.com, which is a wizard-based interface for Google’s advanced search.
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On this day..
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- Track your baby’s every move with Baby Connect – 2010
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- President Obama’s Speech to Students: A Great Opportunity for Synchronous, Live Discussions – 2009
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Comments
3 responses to “Good Internet research video”
Wesley,
Big thanks for the ‘heads up’ in relation to this resource. I have it already downloaded and scheduled into a lesson tomorrow! Thanks for keeping me thinking about things!
Tim
[…] And so it was that I discovered a video on successful Internet research skills from Wesley Fryer’s blog tonight. It was the kind of resource that I had been looking for as we teach against plagiarism in these first few weeks of school. I shared in an earlier blog the videos available by Netsmartz on safe online use. […]
[…] So, I’m wondering if the cooler New Zealand weather would be kinder to my current state of health. Kicking back with the likes of Leigh, Alex, Stephen, Jo Kay and even Artichoke at the amazing The Future of Learning in a Networked World travelling open space conference would be pretty good. In my conversation with Alex the other evening, he described the whole event as “lo-fi” – in a good way. If I could somehow put my current life on pause, then this would be a great event to attend. The line up of thinkers and e-learning experts in tow is phenomenal – just check out the list on the right hand side of the official blog. Leigh Blackall is the mastermind behind this “unconference roadshow” and it is a masterful example of social networking and flat collaboration. For 10 days across a range of venues over the Shaky Isles, taking in the eFest in Wellington as well and talking e-learning with all and sundry at the various visits and events along the way. Even Artichoke who is not associated all that much with TALO (not that I’m all that active there either) signed on the other day. So my challenge is to participate virtually, reading the blog, checking out the wiki, sign up for the The Future of Learning in a Networked World Google Group and check out the Flickr feed. Not quite as good as being there but I’m not missing out totally. Then there’s the Global Summit coming up in October. That looks awesome but at A$795 a head plus airfare plus accommodation to get to Sydney and stay (not including my release from my work for that time) it’s beyond my reach unless someone from educationau reads this blog, takes pity on me and offers sponsorship in exchange for massive live blogging of the event. Never mind, Al Upton will be there (I think) and I hope he gets to go to Leigh Blackall’s session there and say “G’day” for me. But there is a great conference available at a price that suits me and won’t cause any ripples to my family life routine – the K-12 Online Conference. I still have to read more thoroughly about how it’s all going to work and it has received a fair bit of publicity around the edublogosphere. On Sunday afternoon, I checked my home desktop for e-mail and saw that Wesley Fryer had shared his Skype details with me and was online at the time, 11.40 pm his time. (Don’t you just love my blogger name dropping!) I had to say “G’day” and after a quick exchange of pleasantries, Wesley asked if I had considered submitting something for the K-12. I had never even considered that I’d submit anything but as Wes is in charge of the Overcoming Obstacles strand, he got me thinking that maybe I should give some thought to participating in this way. The deadline is Sept. 30 so if I make sure that I attend to my own local school priorities, it could be a goer. Anyway, it promises to be really good with keynote podcasts, online resources and heaps of great learning. And while on the topic of Wes, I appreciated his pointer to a great resource for use in the primary school classroom, Mission Possible: Successful Online Research – an online video produced by answers.com. I used it this afternoon with my class on the ACTIVboard after our Go-Go golf session was rained (ironic, considering how I started this post) and the kids were engaged and pulled some good pointers from it. Even though, someone muttered under their breath towards the end that they thought it was an extended infomercial for answers.com!! At least it’s something educationally useful being plugged – a resource that helps kids to gain and sort through the information overload of the web is a resource that teachers should become familiar with. Hope there’s more in the information literacy vein at the K-12 Online Conference. See you there. […]