Online research is a crucial tool for todays students. From early on in the classroom students are required and encouraged to research and investigate using online platforms. This blog post is asking the question – How do we frame online research so that it is accessible and achievable to students? The opportunities for responses from search engines are huge and daunting to even the most digitally literate of our young people. They need scaffolding and training in the use of search engines and evaluating their content to best answer their questions. An important consideration, although not directly an answer to this question is which search engine should students use and how can we apply filters to increase online safety for students. As a teacher it is important to confirm that the school has suitable online filters, that will to some degree protect the students from unsuitable material. Other strategies that you can implement would be to use child focused search engines such as Kiddle (https://www.kiddle.co/) and KidRex. (https://www.alarms.org/kidrex/) It is worth noting that no filters are perfect so being able to see what the children are searching as they are using their devices is important.
Steps for online research:
1. What are you trying to research or find out? Is there are question you are trying to answer, something you are trying to understand?
2. Brainstorm ideas that come from the question. Are there key words? Phrases? Ideas? Synonyms?
3. Choose your search engine
4. type in what you think are the most important words (spelling isn’t super important) Read the headings from the suggested websites.
4. b) How to choose which links to follow…Ask yourself these questions:
• who has written the site?
• How do I know if they are reliable?
(a good place to start is looking at the URL - .gov means that it is a government website, so it should be ok for facts and numbers; .edu means it is from an education site, and is usually pretty trustworthy or
5. a good place to start might be an online encyclopedia, eg. Britannica kids (https://kids.britannica.com/) and instaGrok (http://www.instagrok.com/index.html) These sites will give you the big picture about your topic, and maybe help you make your search more specific so you can answer more questions.
6. Write it in your own words or write down the big ideas in dot points
