Well, back in the day, for my own personal research, I used the notecard method. I had a list of sources in my notebook, each had a number next to it, and as I found useful information, I'd write a category on the top of the notecard (if I was researching Shakespeare's life, for example, I might write "Family Life"), the notes in the body of the notecard along with the page number, and then write the number of the source on the back of the card. It worked like gang busters.
Quite frankly, I haven't had to do a lot of structured information collecting since I became more computer-savvy. However, in my school 9th and 11th graders do research papers, and I, coincidentally, teach 9th and 11th grade. So.
Our media specialist is a very active participant in our students' lives as researchers. She does a great presentation at the beginning of 9th grade talking about good research methods, data bases, etc. and in our 9th grade English non-fiction unit, we spend a great deal of time discussing what makes a good website, how to research, emotional appeals, types of persuasion, etc.
We teach our students to examine a website critically: who funds this website? who wrote it? what might they have to gain? how can I tell if this is trustworthy information? They get a great baseline knowledge of how to be a smart researcher.
Now, the part we haven't done so well is demonstrating smart organizational methods while researching. I'm just not as up on electronic ways to do this. If kids have their own computers, that's one thing, but most of our research takes place in the media center on school computers. If they are going to maintain online records of their good hits, I need to figure something else out.
As for RSS feeds, I'm still a little confused. Don't RSS feeds just work for blogs? If that's so, how does that help my kid who is researching thematic relationships between 2 short stories? Anyone can have a blog. It's harder to judge the validity of a blog author than, say, the New York Times staff. I'm not seeing a way to use RSS feeds to help them with research if this is so.
Google Reader. What is this again?
Overall, however, I am all about helping my students develop stronger researching skills. It's an easy sell--it really is a valuable life skill.
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3 comments:
I love the 3x5 note card method! I don't think I could get my students to take me seriously on it, though. Anything that seems like extra work up front tends to flop with them.
I am jealous of your cool media specialist... you don't have any materials from her training do you. We don't even have a library except for the one I built in my corner, so I'm already picking up the slack. I try to teach my students to look for authorship and ulterior motives on the internet, but just getting them to understand plagiarism can be a really big step. They laugh at me when I tell them you can't use someone else's ideas.
I agree with you questions about RSS feeds, though. I don't understand what they have to do with research because I would never allow a blog as a source for an academic work. I know you can also get news feeds, but is that really going to help with research?
I think teaching research skills and especially internet research skills is huge for us. The question is just how to do it effectively.
Yeah, I have some stuff I can give you. I can jump drive it to your computer tonight if you'd like. You have a big job there, kiddo. I admire your tenacity.
Nicole, sounds like you're school provides important search strategy training. Students really need to know that the limitations of a lot of stuff, particularly .com stuff that's on the web.
They also need to know that there's a lot of online literature now that they can access--whole texts published before 1923--on Google Reader--a repository of millions of published books; the more recent one's include sections of books.
Students can use note-taking tools like Google Notebook or Trailfire.com to clip sections and add their own notes and then save that material.
In terms of RSS feeds--you can subscribe to feeds from lots of things beyond blogs--newspapers, magazines, wikis, sites, etc. They are particularly important for conducting research using sites such as the NYTimes, which just added most of their archives for free and dropped their Select pay requirement.
I really like having you in the class-you're enthusiasm for teaching is impressive.
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