September/October 2007
How to help middle school students avoid
getting tangled up in the Web
by Colleen Gillard.
Evanston, Ill., eighth-grade humanities teacher
Claudia Garrison has seen it all: the paper citing “Michael”
(as in Michael Jackson) as a source for infant mortality statistics;
the paper whose different fonts unwittingly revealed where material
had been cut and pasted from the Web; and the paper whose expert
opinion came from a blog.
Fast and convenient, the World Wide Web has become
an unparalleled informational resource. It surpasses the card catalogue
as the main entry point for students embarking on papers and projects.
However, it poses particular problems for beginning researchers.
Students need to learn new skills to find the information they need,
evaluate it appropriately, and distinguish between others’
work—properly credited—and their own.
The dramatic rise in plagiarism—whether
intentional or unintentional—indicates the urgent need to
train students in good Internet research skills. As many as one-third
of college papers written today are marred by “significant
plagiarism,” according to turnitin.com, an online plagiarism-checking
service. But developing appropriate Internet skills goes far beyond
preventing plagiarism—and needs to begin well before college.
Most experts say Internet research skills should
be taught in middle school. Techno-savvy but naïve, nearly
all middle school students today have been googling for years, according
to Kathleen Schrock, a former librarian and technology administrator
for Cape Cod’s Nauset Public Schools and creator of “Kathy
Schrock’s Guide for Educators,” an award-winning
online compilation of curriculum-enhancement websites.
“Before grade six,” says Schrock, “students don’t
have the knowledge base to do any serious Internet research.”
By middle school, she says, they are ready for their first introduction
to advanced search techniques and Web resources.
Librarians, technology specialists, and classroom
teachers who teach Web research skills say they focus on three main
areas: how to search, how to evaluate, and how to avoid plagiarism
through proper citation and attribution.
Starting the Search
One of the first challenges for the novice researcher
is how to begin. A few suggestions:
Wikipedia. Some teachers
have students begin their research with a cursory glance at Wikipedia,
the collaborative online encyclopedia. Although Wikipedia articles
themselves cannot be considered reliable sources, since the content
may change and the authorship is unknown, Schrock and others describe
it as a terrific tool for gathering background information and particularly
for finding links to useful, more conventional sources. Wikipedia’s
page on Pocahontas, for example, lists numerous books, links to
more than a dozen websites, and citations for more than 20 other
publications.
Wikipedia can also be valuable for its timeliness.
When the former planet Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet”
status, for example, the “Pluto” entry on Wikipedia
was updated within minutes, notes Cindi Phillip, president of the
American Association for School Librarians.
Subscription-based online resources.
Teachers also emphasize the importance of having students use library
subscriptions to access periodicals online and search educational
databases for additional information. Most school library media
specialists have compiled extensive lists of gateway sites that
offer links to a wide variety of online resources on specific topics
or in subject areas that correspond to classroom curricula. Schrock’s
website lists many good gateway sites, such as Best
of History Web Sites, sponsored by the Center
for Teaching History with Technology, which provides sites appropriate
for student research as well as lesson plans and classroom activities
for teachers.
Key-word searches. Searching
by key word on Google poses
challenges for many students. Due to their lack of background knowledge,
their word-association skills are limited. They may have trouble
coming up with key words related to their topic, such as “teenage
at-risk behavior” or “young alcoholics” for a
topic on teen binge drinking.
Once they have created a list of key words, students
need to learn how to limit their search to avoid having to sort
through an avalanche of information. “I teach students to
use the advanced search feature on Google [to the right of the search
bar], which will allow them to hone their searches,” says
Schrock. (See The Five Ws of Web Research)
Evaluating Websites
Once students have begun a Google search, they
often find it difficult to assess the quality of the hundreds of
hits they may turn up, Schrock says. Some students look at the top
three websites and think they’re done, she says, while others
mistakenly equate the most current site with the most reliable.
Librarian Phillip illustrates the problem of reliability
to her students by showing them a PDF of a website called “Lake
Michigan Whale Watching” that presents purportedly scientific
information about the whales and dolphins that live in Lake Michigan.
Then she takes them to an encyclopedia or the National Geographic
website—“sources kids know to have been checked for
accuracy”—to show them that whales cannot live in fresh
water. Through this exercise, Phillip teaches students to use multiple
sources to check the information they gather.
She also shows them how to check websites to find
out who is sponsoring the site or owns the material. Students whose
Google search has landed them in the middle of a site should know
how to look for its home page or use the URL, the top or bottom
bars on the page, or the webmaster link to find clues to its sponsorship.
The site name or links can then be googled for more information
to detect any potential sources of bias and evaluate the site’s
credibility.
Students should also be encouraged to check the
qualifications of people cited as experts by using Google,
Who’s Who, Wikipedia, or Amazon author searches, she says.
A Web search for George Bell, the “marine biologist”
cited on the Lake Michigan whale watching website, for example,
comes up empty. Online subscription sources can also be used to
research experts and verify facts found elsewhere.
All this searching and evaluating takes time,
for teachers as well as students. Middle school teacher Garrison
recommends that teachers budget as much time to help students with
their research as they do to help with the writing itself.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism—the act of passing off another’s
words, ideas, images, work, or concepts as one’s own—comes
up every year in just about every classroom, teachers say, and the
ease with which content can be copied and pasted off the Web has
made it even more of a problem. “Kids don’t always realize
this is what they’re doing, even after you’ve talked
to them,” says Garrison. “Sometimes they think that
as long as they’re citing the sources, they’re OK.”
Students ages 9 to 12 are ripe for learning about
the ethics of attribution in research, says David
Whittier, a Boston University education professor who has written
about cyberethics. Whittier tells the story of a student who copies
a file from the Internet and can’t understand why that is
“stealing” when the digital source “is still there”
on the screen. Young students don’t understand the concept
of intellectual property, he explains, and may not grasp that material
that is presented anonymously still has an author.
Many teachers warn students to use quotation marks
and attributions every time they copy another’s words. Brookline
(Mass.) High School chemistry teacher Stephen Lantos, who assigns
major research projects in all his classes, instructs students,
“When in doubt, always cite.” Noting that plagiarism
sometimes occurs when students use jargon or borrow overly abstract
terms or concepts, Lantos tells his students they may not use or
even quote anything they don’t understand. Instead, they must
look up anything they don’t know and restate what they have
learned in their own words. Lantos also sets aside time to review
student citations carefully.
To illustrate how easy it is to plagiarize unwittingly,
some middle school teachers encourage students to run their work
through online plagiarism checking services, such as turnitin.com,
ithenticate.com,
or canexus.com, before they turn
their papers in. At the college level, these services can be used
to enforce plagiarism policies. But when used independently by students,
these services can be a useful—and eye-opening—tool.
Teachers can also structure research assignments
in ways that will elicit original work. Topics that begin with “how”
or “why” questions are usually more original and less
vulnerable to plagiarism than fact-driven topics, teachers say.
Lantos gives his students about 40 sample topics and then reviews
project choices carefully with each student. He emphasizes the importance
of allowing students to pick their topics as a way to own their
material.
Garrison agrees that having a personal connection
to the topic can encourage original thinking among students. She
also passes out examples of previous student papers to illustrate
good structure, research sources, citation references, and narrative
voice. By making writing less daunting, she says, teachers can help
students avoid falling into the trap of cut-and-paste plagiarism.
Although many schools have library or media specialists
who can help students develop their Internet skills, they must still
work closely with subject-area teachers. Brookline High’s
media specialist, Beverly Shinn, and her colleagues have developed
an extensive curriculum that is distributed and reviewed every year
in classrooms across the city. Nonetheless, she finds that such
instruction is most effectively taught “at point of need,”
rather than in separate classes. Most students, she notes, “don’t
really learn the lessons until they’ve made the mistakes.”
Colleen Gillard is a freelance education writer
based in Cambridge, Mass.
For Further Information
R. Beach. teachingmedialiteracy.com:
A Web-Linked Guide to Resources and Activities. New York:
Teachers College Press, 2007.
Best of History Web Sites.
www.besthistorysites.net
“Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators.”
school.discovery.com/schrockguide
J. Keane. Internet-Based
Student Research: Creating to Learn with a Step-by-Step Approach,
Grades 5-12. Worthington, OH: Linworth Publishing, 2006.
Lake Michigan Whale Watching. www.classroomhelp.com/lessons/web/WHALES/whale_in_MI.pdf
D. Whittier. “Cyberethics in the Googling
Age.” Boston University School of Education Journal of
Education 187, no. 2 (2006): 1-77. |
