Day two of the project was similar to day 1.
The students worked on finding information using the provided links. I'm starting to see a trend that will, without intervention, only increase as students get older. I intend to intervene.
Students want to allow a search engine to do all the work for them. Even though about a half dozen really good links were provided, some students went straight for askkids.com. This is rather a foreshadowing of what I see in 5th and 6th grade.
But beyond wanting to use a search engine, they also want to simply type in a question and get an answer. It leads to students writing down answer based on the short blurbs provided on the search result page (and attempting to cite google or bing or blekko, etc., as sources) and to trusting completely sites such as answers.com and wikianswers.
To combat the use of search engines as sources, I work with older students to understand what a search engine is. To combat the use of "answers" sites, we talk frequently--in 4th grade and up--about who is providing those answers and whether or not they can be trusted. I'm a big fan of teaching students to just verify everything they find with another source. However, I fear that they are still seeing it as "busy work" that the computer teacher makes them do rather than a skill that needs to be applied to internet research in all other areas. But persistence usually pays off for me, so I'll just keep at it.
That got rambling and slightly off topic of fourth grade.
What really went well today was that students did research in two groups, first the boys and then the girls. The non-research group worked on a reading assignment. I commented to the teacher that the students were so much more focused and calm this way. She said that she had found that herself. Its a conveniently even class--11 and 13.
Next up is a bit more research, an intro to the student server, and then inspiration.
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