Teaching+Kids+to+Search

Anytime, in any subject area, that you use internet resources with kids, it's an opportunity to teach and reinforce critical evaluation skills. Kids can't really hear enough of this. There are a lot different evaluative criteria sites but what's really interesting is that in research we've found that well-trained children can and do apply these criteria....when they're in a lesson about internet searching..... and the minute they're doing something else? The criteria never cross their minds. So the more we can remind kids that this is an unfiltered environment, the better.

Texts: There are a lot of possibilities for you to use a text to guide you..and all of them contains tricks and tips and can provide you with a guide to teaching it as well. --Randolph Hock. //The Extreme Searcher's Handbook.// (My favorite...and he's got some additional titles.) --Irene E. McDermott. //Librarian's Internet Survival Guide: Strategies for the High-Tech Reference Desk.// --Barbara C. Cruz and James A. Duplass. //The Elementary Teacher's Guide to the Best Internet Resources// --Alan M. Schlein. //Find It Online, Fourth Edition: The Complete Guide to Online Research.// --E. Ackermann and Karen Hartman. //The Information Specialist's Guide to Searching and Researching on the Internet and the World Wide Web//.

Two great sites that provide good information re: the internet are: Animated Internet: [] Animations explaining everything related to the net. Easy to use in class. Webopedia: [] Definitions and explanations for terms and concepts. A great reference site. And Kathy Schrock has a whole set of resources, ready to use, to help you teach. []

And if you're interested in Web 2.0, there's one, rather overwhelming but quite complete, site. [|http://www.go2web20.net/] In response to the massive number of entries here, they've responded by offering sorting capabilities and if you choose, for example, e-learning, you'll see a more manageable list. [] Scroll over any application to see what it does. (CAK)