Searching the World Wide Web (WWW) Strategies for Students (week 1)
A brief overview: In this modern day and age, teachers must be able to teach their students how to safely and effectively navigate the world wide web to expand their learning. There is a plethora of search engines geared specifically towards students. Learning simple tips, like understanding the meanings of various site names and different ways to phrase search engines will help students navigate the Web more effectively. Furthermore, it is crucial that students be able to evaluate a site for its content not only to insure that they are safe, but that the information is credible.
Searching the WWW Strategies for Students:
- Tell students to know what they are looking for but at the same time be willing to explore--it's easy to get distracted and sidetracked!
- Have them try using different key words in the same search to see how different words and phrases produce different search results.
- Give them a list of different student search engines they could use--using more than one can provide more complete information on a subject.
- Emphasis the importance of patience--finding what you need can take time, and furthermore clicking 2 billion times on the same icon will not make it open faster.
Teaching Students How to Evaluate WWW pages:
Tell your students that just because it's on the web, that doesn't mean it is a credible source.
Be cautious and ASK:
- Who designed/sponsored this page? (Are they knowledgeable, biases?)
- What's the message/purpose of the page? (To share information, sell something, argue a position?)
- Where did the information come from? What are their sources? (Books, lectures, research?)
- When was the page last updated? (Recently? Is it monitored? Are there dead links?)
Bloom's Taxonomy Resources (week 5)
A brief overview: Bloom's Taxonomy categorizes different levels of thinking/questioning. It begins at the level of Knowledge, and builds up/narrows down to the highest-level of thinking, which is Evaluation. Teachers can use Bloom's Taxonomy to write objectives for units.
Links to Web Resources on Bloom's Taxonomy:
