Grade 7 and 8 - Comprehensive Research Skills Workshop

These two workshops with Rabbi Rottenberg’s 7 and 8s were the most intensive of the lot and covered it all, from exercises on forming effective queries in search engines, to learning proper MLA bibliography format, to examine credible and non-credible sites in research.  


We parsed some searches to find out which keywords were critical and which were not necessary to our search.

This exercise was based on a great Google Searching workshop that is available free online.

Picking the Right Search Terms

We worked on creating effective queries for many interesting questions.




Grade 8 had the toughest job, not only did they have to create a mini-bio on the celebrity of their choosing, they had to critically examine the sites they were using as they were going.  The results were both entertaining and encouraging as students started fitting together key concepts.

Overall these workshops have been incredibly rewarding for me and I hope to hear that the result of these workshops is that kids are handing in much better quality assignments and choosing their sources much more critically.

Grade 6 Research Skills Workshop

When I met with Rabbi Rottenberg’s Grade 6s we examined a fake website and used a critical checklist to determine if the site was or was not credible. This is such a fun exercise and really forces students to develop their critical thinking abilities as well as do some supplemental research to see what they can discover elsewhere about the author or the purported "tree octopus."

It was incredible how many kids could be so easily duped.

Luckily a few web saavy students knew it was a fake right away.

The checklist was a really great tool because it forced students to examine areas of the site that they might not otherwise have even thought twice about. 

Is this website credible or not?

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Web Evaluation Checklist                                                                            

Authority	YES	NO
Is it clear who wrote the content?
Is the author an expert on the subject?  Does he have a good reputation?
Is there contact information that can be verified?
Accuracy
Do you believe that the content is true?
Does the information use correct grammar, spelling and sentence structure?
Are the photos real or potentially altered in some way?
Objectivity
Is the information presented in a balanced way?
Is all the information included?  Have some things been intentionally left out?
If there are ads on the page, do they have anything to do with then content of the page?
Currency
Is there any date to show when the content was created?
Is there any date to show when the content was last updated?
Do all the links work?
Coverage
Is the subject discussed in depth?
Do the links on the page lead to trustworthy sites?
Compare
Run a search on this topic.  Can you find two other credible websites?

I can't recommend this Tree Octopus exercise enough for teachers of media and digital literacy!

Credible and Non-Credible Sources

My second workshop was with Rachel’s Grade 5 class.  I wanted to have a discussion with the students about credible and non-credible sites. 



This Google video was shared with the group.

To really get the message across, we worked on the following exercise;

Exercise: Two of these websites are news satire.  Two involve extreme bias based on the viewpoint of the source.  Two are from healthy news sources that generally are more centered or have not too much bias either way.  Identify them!   

Trudeau by the Numbers, They're Bad

Justin Trudeau UN speech hailed as ‘not Donald Trump’s UN speech’

Canada has spent $110,000 to avoid paying $6,000 for indigenous teen's orthodontics

Justin Trudeau is Deporting Illegal Immigrants…Hypocrite Much?

Justin Trudeau Unveils Plan To Meet Healthcare Needs Of Canada’s Aging Prog Rockers

Ukraine and Google playing Justin Trudeau's 'sock game'

Tips for searching the web to ensure you are using legitimate sites for research and news articles:

Where - Where is the content published?

Who - Look for an author at the beginning or end of the text. Try and find out a bit more about the author if time allows.

What - What kind of website is it? Business? News? Personal Blog? Entertainment? What is the purpose of the site? What is the point of view of this website? Is it biased? Unbalanced?

When - Look for a publication date.

I urge students to use mediabiasfactcheck.com/

If a source has extreme bias or is biased completely to the left or right, it is not
a great source for your news research. 

If a source is more to the center, even if that means “left-center” or
“right-center”, then it is safe to use; Even the CBC is considered a bit left-center!

It was really interesting to observe just how much of a challenge it is for students to identify fake news.  I am looking forward to doing more work with students on this topic. 

Research Skills workshop with Grade 3

In my first set of workshops, I guided Julie’s Grade 3 class on the basics of web searching and using kid-friendly search engines such as Kiddle.  



I engaged them in a discussion about why shared sites like Wikipedia and YouTube are not recommended sources for academic research.  We went over a very simple bibliography and then I got students to team up and research bugs.  It was a fun project overall and the kids really got into their research subjects.






Here are some examples of the finished product:









I was very proud of these kids who had to pick up a lot of skills in a two period workshop.  They did great work!