You have started using the computer lab to work on classroom projects with your digital students, which is a great opportunity for all students to get hands-on experiences with different technologies. Scanners, videos, CDs, DVDs, and many other technologies are available from which to choose. Students also can access the Internet. Managing your students in the lab while they explore these different technologies is a challenge. You decide to design a project so your students will work in groups to research a famous person in history. Before students begin their research your might reflect on the following questions: Do students need guidance on how to use a search engine to perform a proper search? Do they need help to avoid getting lost using the various technologies? Do they understand that asking the correct question or questions is an important part of the solution for finding the correct answer? What about searching reference materials? Are students using primary and secondary resources? How can I design research projects that go beyond the standard writing of a paper to engage your digital students in using many different types of technologies in a collaborative way?
It is important that students know how to use search engines properly before they begin to gather information from the Internet. If I assigned them such a project, I would take part of the period to explain the assignment and then the rest to show them how to use search engines to find reliable information. First, I would go over the differences between primary and secondary source material and how each should be viewed. Then I would list some indicators of scholarly and non-scholarly sources, for instance authorship, tone, and citation. I would then guide them through the types of websites they should look for and, if available, introduce them to databases of scholarly work. Showing them how to use these would likely take significantly longer than explaining Google, with which they would probably generally be familiar. Once the class understood how to find and identify reliable sources, I would go over basic search tips: using quotation marks for exact phrases, trying synonyms, and trying various search engines. During the project, I would have groups of students collaborate by having them divide up the areas of research, but assisting each other when anyone was unable to find information on his or her assigned topic. This would help them to discover for themselves and share search skills and strategies which they could then use later on.
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