Research Redux

In our last few blog postings, Mrs. Hamilton and I have discussed the research projects that we've been doing with both the sixth and seventh grade classes. I've spent a lot of my class time with seventh grade students, discussing, practicing (is "Googleing" a word?), and engaging in research. While we do meet just once a week, much time and energy has been devoted to the practice of research in those classes. I've really been hoping that the concept of authenticating resources (a.k.a. checking sources) was solidifying in their minds. However, much to my dismay, one of the three sections of classes had that look of confusion on their faces when I was reviewing the requirements of their I-Search project and mentioned authenticated resources.

As a teacher, I wondered what went wrong. I used the same agendas, rubric, and models for all three sections. I utilized a constructivist approach so that each student had to create a list of characteristics of a valid research site. Doesn't this mean that by creating their understanding, they should remember it better? Was this class just more honest than the others? And lastly, how will these students survive in our world of information overload? So I did what I could -
continued to discuss authenticated resources seemingly ad nauseam in class (and probably in this blog, too) and engaged in deep breathing exercises.

I am fairly certain that I am not the only teacher who has experienced this, and we will move on to a new topic in class soon. If the true indication of students' understanding is their ability to use their knowledge flexibly, then I can know only if I succeeded from the results of future projects and from the experiences of colleagues who ask these students to research. Please let me know what happens.

Google: First try or last resort?

I have two full disclosures (confessions?) for this blog. First, this article was inspired by Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains,” in the July/August edition of the Atlantic Monthly. Secondly, to find a copy of the article, I Googled the title. I was unable to access the article that way, so I then turned to our Minuteman Library Network and obtained a copy from the Academic One database.

This week in my seventh grade technology class, I projected the title of Carr’s article and asked students what they thought he meant. Their responses were many and included:
*We don’t go into a book or a library to look things up. We just go to Google.
*It’s spending too much time not thinking – everything is right in front of you.
*Google makes it too easy to forget things. When I didn’t remember how to do my math homework, I used Google.
*Some of the sources you find on Google won’t be true.
*(It’s) Giving us the wrong idea about what you want to know – it could be written by anybody.

I was intrigued to hear their perceptions about Googling. While all their thoughts about the title probably are true, Carr’s argument in the article is that our overuse of the Internet for reading is causing changes in the way our brains function.

And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski (Carr, 2008).

Although I am a heavy user of the Internet for news and information (see disclosure above), I am a firm believer in moderation. I believe that one can adjust his/her reading style depending on the purpose of the reading. I also believe that research and reading non-fiction does involve more skimming than immersing oneself in a novel. That being said, students growing up online should be taught explicitly how and when to use different styles of reading.

So we are going to spend some time in our classes skimming, reading, and comparing research results from Google and from our library databases. My first goal for students is that they are able to judge for their own research purposes when to use Google as a first try or last resort. Secondly, and just as importantly, I want students to learn when to skim and when to read deeply.

Which method do you use when Googling? First try or last resort?

S. Sicard