Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report - S16

S16

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE S15

information on African-American
history, they could wind up on the
site for the Ku Klux Klan.”
It’s also important to know if a
site is commercial. If so, it may be
slanted toward having users buy
products.
“Not that advertising on a site
makes it less credible,” Ms. Randall
said. “But it’s just another point to
consider when looking at information. What is the intent of the information?”
When students take the time
to approach their Web research
thoughtfully, they sometimes encounter websites that are biased.

Ms. Harris, the University Laboratory High librarian, recalls working with a student who was writing
a paper on George Orwell’s 1984.
The boy found an essay about the
book on the site of the Institute for
Historical Review. Upon closer examination, the website was a Holocaust-denial website, Ms. Harris
said.
“It looks scholarly because it’s
called ‘institute,’ and there are citations at the bottom,” she said.
To help students scrutinize websites, Ms. Harris uses a lesson
called “Whodunit,” which takes
students to various sites and has
them answer questions about who
wrote the information, what their

MAY 22, 2013

credentials are, and who is sponsoring the site.
Ms. Shaw provides a checklist to
help students decide whether sites
are credible. It includes questions
such as: Are there dead links? Do
images support the stated facts?
Are there links and references to
other websites, and resources and
experts that corroborate the information?
Mr. Baklini of Albuquerque
Academy advises his students to
be aware of sites where the language comes on too strong and the
attempt is to persuade readers how
to think.
He also starts the school year by
teaching a media-literacy unit in

which he shows students how to
examine the persuasive techniques
advertisers use when trying to sell
products. The point is to teach his
students how to look at media carefully. That ability to scrutinize carries over to their Web research, he
said.
“I have them think about these
persuasive techniques, and I say if
you see any of those techniques in
there, if someone is trying to convince you to think a certain way,
you can still read that website, but
take it with a grain of salt,” he said.
It can be difficult for teachers
to carve out time to teach yet another set of skills. But it’s important to do so, Ms. Randall of Com-

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Modeling the Process
Teachers should model the
process for searching online and
make it something students do
regularly in their classes, educators say.
Ms. Shaw integrated searching
into her classroom by creating a
classroom job of “searcher.” That
student’s responsibility was to
search the Internet for answers
to questions that would come up
during the day’s class. Ms. Shaw
used that approach as an opportunity to talk about strategies for
good online research.
Teaching students solid online
search skills is important not only

“

This tells
the students that
teachers value
what sources
the students are
using and that
the sources they
use matter. ”
FRANCES JACOBSON
HARRIS
Librarian,
University Laboratory High School
Urbana, Ill.

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mon Sense Media said.
“If you don’t take time to do it,
the kids aren’t going to be giving
you their best work,” she said.
“You have kids pulling information from sources that are not reliable and building a hypothesis or
research paper around information that isn’t accurate.”

Website

www.edweek.org/ii

because it will help them produce
better work, but also because it
prepares them to judge the validity of all sorts of information and
to be critical thinkers.
Librarians have a natural place
in the forefront of helping students be more adept at online research.
“School librarians should be a
partner in this,” Ms. Harris said.
“Oftentimes, teachers don’t realize
that, or sadly schools don’t have
school librarians.”
Teachers should give credit to
the process of searching, not just
for the final product, she added.
Students can turn in search logs
or annotated bibliographies to emphasize that process.
“This tells the students that
teachers value what sources the
students are using and that the
sources they use matter,” Ms. Harris said. “That way, kids won’t just
jump to the easiest, most meaningless thing.”
She and others say it’s vital to
reinforce those skills repeatedly in
working with students.
“They won’t learn everything
they need to know from one assignment,” Ms. Harris said. “It’s
like learning how to write. Every
context is different.” n

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Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report