When I think back to my high school years and writing research papers, I remember the huge set of encyclopedias that my parent’s had in their basement and the hours spent in the library trying to find books related to a specific person or concept. Locating professional journals through the card catalog, and then trying to hunt them down in the library was a task in and of itself. When those research papers were completed, one really felt that they truly “researched” and documented a topic. The idea of researching now, has a whole new look about it. Whether the research is done in the comfort of one’s own home, at school, in the car, or waiting in line at the grocery store, there is continuously information available at one’s fingertips. The internet provides information on almost everything imaginable. Wikipedia and YouTube are just two resources for such information. I understand that both of these sources can contain misleading information, and are not necessarily always reliable sources of information. However, I do believe that the beneficial information that they can provide, outweighs the misleading information, so I do use both Wikipedia and YouTube at times in my own classroom. When trying to locate a quick formula, or how to video, Wikipedia and YouTube are usually the first to come up during an internet search. However, when researching a topic for a paper, I believe that credible, professional resources need to be used. I have educated my students on the pros and cons of the sources like Wikipedia and YouTube. I think that they realize when it is acceptable to use them as a source of information.
I remember those days of researching that you reflect on during my undergrad days. I distinctly remember sitting on the floor of the OU library sorting through dozens of magazines to find articles on elephant preservation. Writing that paper today would have been completely different. I wonder with today's students though, do they ever develop the love of the library that we did? My classroom experience has been with younger elementary students and for them the excitement seems to be there. What about the middle school and high school students. I cannot imagine a world without Wikis and the online research tools that we have but, on the other hand I cannot imagine a world without libraries.
ReplyDeleteI know that my own children, ages 5, 8, and 10, love going to the library! However, they go there for pleasure, not for research. I'm not so sure that the high school students that I teach have the same feeling... When researching a topic, the internet definitely seems to be a really efficient way to do research.
ReplyDeleteWe take our Middle Schoolers to the Library about once a month for books, but never for research. Research begins with a netbook that runs slower than their cell phones.
ReplyDeleteMy high school and middle school research was a mix of Encyclopedias, non-fiction books, and HTML internet. Luckily by college Google Scholar was readily available for me.
That is great that the middle school students still have the opportunity to go to the library on a regular basis during school for pleasurable reading . I'm afraid if they did not go during school, they would not go at all! I'm thinking the days of using the library for research papers are becoming limited!
DeleteAlicia
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, both Wikipedia and YouTube have benefits for students. I just think that as you mentioned these sources can be used for certain things and not necessarily for others. And the fact that you explain to your students the pros and cons of the sites is great. As long as the students know that sometimes the sources are not always good then I think it's ok. Especially if they use it as a starting point and continue to seek and use other more credible sources.
I definitely think that the students benefit from the use of YouTube and Wikis! However, I am beginning to see that the students do not think it is necessary to memorize information, because almost everything is available at their fingertips:)
ReplyDeleteThat is what we as educators need to do, is educate the students not to take the first resource as being the best source. The internet has done one thing for all of use, it has made it faster to check different resources on a topic with a simple click. Teaching the student to do the rechecking is only going to have a positive effect on their research papers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. We as educators need to educate our students not to take the first sources as being the best source. They have it easy now with the internet since all they have to do is a simple click to recheck any source. This is going to make for better research pages if we educate students in this manner.
ReplyDeleteTrying to locate reliable information may be time consuming, however, beneficial in the long run. Our students need to know this.
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