Category: Research

EasyBib, the first name most educators think of when citing sources, has created a useful summary on MLA guidelines for citing sources. Best of all, it’s an infographic you can grab and post on your wall (with proper citation, of course):

Click here for the original post.

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Teaching technology is a difficult profession because people learn in different ways and at different rates. However, one thing that can make it easier for students to learn is for teachers to include instructions on basic academic skills like vocabulary, keyboarding, digital citizenship, and research.

The better a student’s vocabulary, the easier it is for them to improve their comprehension and express themselves in oral and written form. The better a student learns how to use a keyboard, the faster and more accurately, they can work with a computer. The better a student’s digital citizenship, the more safely they can navigate the Internet websites, staying away from scammy links. Finally, the better a student’s research skills, the easier it will be for them to sort out the true from the false.

Technology has made it easier than ever before to do research. Besides an abundance of sources, the Internet provides ways to sift and sort through massive amounts of information through the use of search engines and advanced filters. Compare this to the old school way of doing research: spending hours in a large library and slowly filling out flash cards. Now research is as efficient as doing a Google search to find relevant websites and then bookmarking the site for later reference.

However, besides these online tools, tech teachers can also benefit by borrowing research tools used by historians.

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Man is a thinking creature. We like evaluating ideas and sharing thoughts. That’s a good thing. The more we collaborate, the smarter we all become.

Implicit in this is that we don’t claim someone else’s ideas as our own. In fact, it’s illegal to do this. Read through this rephrasing of American copyright law:

“The law states that works of art created in the US after January 1, 1978, are automatically protected by copyright once they are fixed in a tangible medium (like the Internet). BUT a single copy may be used for scholarly research (even if that’s a 2nd grade life cycle report) or in teaching or preparation to teach a class.” –Jacqui Murray, Ask a Tech Teacher

When we claim someone else’s work as our own, be it text, artwork, movies, music, or any other form of media, it’s called plagiarism:

“[Plagiarism is the] wrongful appropriation of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions”

The rules and laws surrounding plagiarism aren’t nearly as well-known as those that deal with, say, driving a car or illegally crossing a street. The Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics surveyed 43,000 high school students and found that:

• 59% of high school students admitted cheating on a test during the last year. 34% self-reported doing it more than twice.
• One out of three high school students admitted that they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

One note: Laws addressing plagiarizing differ throughout the world. This article deals with commonly-accepted international guidelines and specific rules aligned with the laws of the United States.

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I read recently that 70% of millennials get their news from Facebook. Really? Isn’t Facebook a place to share personal information, stay in touch with friends and families, post pictures of weddings and birthdays? So why do students turn to it for news? And then, not two days later, I heard Twitter has reclassified their app as a news  purveyor rather than a social media device. Once again: Who gets news from Twitter? Apparently a lot of adults. No surprise news shows are littered with references to listener’s tweets and presidential candidates break stories via their Twitter stream.

One more stat — which may explain the whole social-media-as-news-trend — and then I’ll connect these dots: 60% of people don’t trust traditional news sources. That’s newspapers, evening news, and anything considered ‘mainstream media’. They prefer blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

So when it comes to research, are you still directing kids toward your grandmother’s resources — encyclopedias, reference books, and museums? No doubt, these are excellent sources, but if students aren’t motivated by them, they won’t get a lot out of them. I have a list of eight research sites that walk the line between stodgy (textbooks) and out-there (Twitter and Facebook), designed by their developers with an eye toward enticing students in and then keeping their interest. It’s notable that most are free, but include advertising. The exception is BrainPOP — there are no ads, but it requires a hefty annual fee:

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Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please contact me at askatechteacher at gmail dot com and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Melissa:

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Here are quick, safe spots to send students for research:

1. BrainPop–with the BrainPop characters, a launchpad to curiosity
2. CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
3. Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
4. Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
5. Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
6. Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
7. History Channel–great speeches
8. How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
9. Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
10. National Geographic for Kids
11. Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
12. TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
13. Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
14. World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

1. BibMe
2. Citation Machine
3. EasyBib

Kids Search Engines

1. Kiddle–visual search engine for kids
2. Kid Rex
3. Kidtopia

How to Research

1. A Google A Day
2. How to Search on Google
3. Power Searching (with Google)
4. Teaching students to search/research
5. Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8

Lesson Plans

1. Image Copyright Do’s and Don’ts
2. Internet Search and Research

Resources/Research

1. Kids Picture Dictionary
2. Primary Source Documents
3. Talk to Books–research your topic based on books

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Create a trifold brochure in Publisher to go along with colonization or another unit of inquiry in the classroom. This project focuses on research and is more involved than #51 History Trifold. Students add lots of detail and lots of research on different colonization topics. Besides Publisher, students learn to research on the internet and copy-paste pictures from the internet

Lesson Plan

Use each panel in the trifold (there are six) to cover a different topic you’re discussing in class.

Click on each page of lesson plan.

You can also use a template in Google Docs, Google Presentations, or MS Word if you don’t have Publisher:

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Create a magazine on any topic you’re covering in class using text, pictures, diagrams, charts. Add a cover and a table of contents.

Click on each page of lesson plan.

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Playful Learning (Parents’ Choice Gold Medal website) is a well-done, professional-looking website that  offers advice, projects, and visual images touting the benefits of education through play. The reader is drawn into the child-centered imagery and strong basic colors, wanting everything on offer so their child’s play areas can look and work as described.

Let’s back up a moment. Play as the vehicle of education is not a revolutionary idea. Pedagogy has long recommended ‘play’ as a superior teacher for youngers–

Play is the great synthesizing, integrating, and developing force in childhood and adolescence. –PsycINFO Database Record 2012 APA,

The play of children is not recreation; it means earnest work. Play is the purest intellectual production of the human being, in this stage … for the whole man is visible in them, in his finest capacities, in his innermost being.~ Friedrich Froebel

In general, research shows strong links between creative play and language, physical, cognitive, and social development. Play is a healthy, essential part of childhood. —Department of Education, Newfoundland Labrador

Young children learn the most important things not by being told but by constructing knowledge for themselves in interaction with the physical world and with other children – and the way they do this is by playing.” –Jones, E., & Reynolds, G.  “The play’s the thing: Teachers’ roles in children’s play”

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