Using the internet for research is certainly not a new idea. I think that integrating the internet into your teaching style is a natural response when you have grown up in a technological world like my generation has. I have used tools from Ask Jeeves to online presentation websites like Prezi I have always integrated online research and tools into my educational assignments. So its an easy transition to think of using it in a teaching capacity. I thought that some of the statistics given in this weeks chapter were a little shocking. Like only 52% of internet users know how to judge the objectivity of an online source. This really made me question whether or not I can properly judge it or not. It also said that only 35% of online users know how to properly narrow down and overly broad search. This doesn't surprise me as much since there is so much information available online and there is only so many ways that you can narrow down your choices properly.
Using the internet is always a good way to start but the big problem that educators need to discuss in their classrooms when teaching it is the act of plagiarism. Since everything online is able to be copied and pasted onto your own work like a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation it is so incredibly important to teach your students how to properly site the information they are given. Although plagiarism has always been an issue, with the use of online resources the chance of doing so is so much greater because its a simple right click away instead of a tedious task with a pencil.
Tech Tool 5.1:
Photo and Audio Resources on the web are something that people are using more and more ofter now that the web is integrated into so many facets of our everyday life. Flickr, Photobucket, ad Shutterbug are just some of the hundreds of photo websites that are available for public use today. They are usually completely free and make it easy to share photos from any location instead of storing them on your hard drive. It even makes it easier to share them on websites you design or blogs like this one.
Focus Question:
What are search engines and how do they work?
According to our text book which is sited in journal posting one below, search engines are software programs that use networks of computers to access information about a topic from it's databases. So they are basically sites used to retrieve information from the internet in an easy way. There are many different search engines you can choose to use but according to a study done in 2007 Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL are the most popular search engines used and account for 95% of online searches done world wide. However, Microsoft has recently introduced a new search engine called Bing, which is now used approximately as often as each of the ones I listed before.
The 52% statistic is an interesting one - and hopefully, you are learning new tips to evaluate internet websites as you take this class. If you think about it, the web is relatively new and it didn't come with instructions...so people just started using it (understandably since it is such a vast array of information). When it first came out, it was limited to more valid sites, like the universities and government. Once it went public, it ballooned with information and people 'forgot' to critically think about the information, since prior to the web, most information was published in a newspaper/shown on TV and we believed it was credible due to the source (that of course could be argued, but that's another issue). So, I do believe we need to discuss it with students and parents alike, as well as model ethical use in the classroom.
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