Research and the typical High School student

We're headed full blast into Winter break but a few of my students have taken advantage of the dribbling lessons that we worked on and have really started to understand the value and pitfalls of internet research. Especially useful were the Primary Source bookmark, the Online Search Techniques lesson and the evaluating sources and sites lessons. I hope they remember and apply what we worked on. Guess I'll check in with them in January and see what has "stood the test of time!!!"

Databases

Tonight's class was fun. We learned about online research tools available through the district website. There were many different levels of databases available. Even the most rudimentary was fun to look at and useful even for high school students. I will link the district list to my list so my students can use the databases more easily.

FUN!!!

Kathy and I taught the RPC and other things to the IB class that is the focus of most of the activities for this class. Wow!! What fun. There were OOOOOs and Ahhhhs, yes most of them saw the relevance and the usefulness of this tool. FUN!!! Here's some pics:

Amazing the value of extra credit. One more day in the lab and they've already done everything that I asked and are looking for more.

Teaching RPC

Monday and Tuesday of this week was spent teaching the research process calculator and with the leftover time I also went into proper format for creating a bibliography for interested students. Both were very rewarding lessons. Students really appreciated the calculator and appreciated it's value for other classes. Most of them either book marked my page or Elm for future reference. COOL!!!

IB Music

Hey, just realized that no one knows to look at my IB Music page. That is the focus class for this research and information literacy work. Check out the rest but click on IB Music to see the latest improvements. Duh, just realized I can link that page, here it is. http://henry.mpls.k12.mn.us/IB_Music2.html

Updated Web Page

After viewing the Research Process Calculator I got so excited I updated my web page with a link to the calculator and will show my students Monday where to find it and how to use it. I am also linking my web page here and hopefully my peers will view it and give me feedback and suggestions for improving it.

http://henry.mpls.k12.mn.us/Ms_Roth.html

The frustrating part about our web pages is that no one ever looks at them. Last year I had a survey asking viewers to let me know each time they visited and I got 5 responses, all first time users and they never came back.

Question: How do you get your students to use your web site? Why spend so much time on something that no one looks at?

Reading through Thing 5 has given me some ideas for promoting my web page, possibilities include putting assignments on the page rather than printing them and handing them out in class, including more resources and references materials guaged to excite and stimulate thinking, give extra credit points if they locate certain items and report a "key phrase" or something like that. Amazing the power of extra credit points!

Research Process Calculator

Tonight we set up our RSS and learned about the Research Calculator. It was very interesting and I can hardly wait to try it out with my students. They always seem to be a day late and a dollar short. Now with another "entity" imposing objective deadlines for them (rather than my seemingly subjective ones designed to ruin their social life) maybe I'll see more work from them and maybe they'll be able to visualize and continue along a sensible timeline rather than a last minute scramble to do the work. We can always hope can't we?

Mpls Library Card

I went online to see if my card still worked. It had expired, so I called the help desk and they reactivated my card. I have now have access from any computer. I also have now done the other assignment for class and I am ready for Wednesday. Hope the food is as good as Monday.

Training Day One

Day one training and we all survived. Learned many new things about things I never heard about on the internet and about information literacy. It's all exciting and interesting but it's getting to be a long day.