Teaching children how to search the Internet
Have you ever looked over a child’s shoulder while searching the Internet? There are so many indiscriminate clicks! What comes up first should be what they seek to find. Add to that interesting graphics and ads, it’s not long before they end up being in no way related to what they were looking for to begin with!
When using the Internet with younger children, particularly third graders and younger, you may want to have a predefined set of web sites selected for students to use. This will focus work time and help students to be more productive as the problem of website credibility and random searching will be eliminated. Even with older students, I often tell them that they should first use the online encyclopedia before venturing into search engines.
When learning to collect key points of information from a website, I often choose a topic that class is studying, provide a high-content website that I have located, and then ask students to find five key points of interest and write them down. on paper. It is always worth exploring the idea of ”points of interest” with a class, as children often choose isolated facts that are not important in the big picture of learning or even remotely interesting. This teaches the skill of scanning a web page. Often students will start reading every word of a web page and then give up after the first paragraph or two. Learning to scan a page is a skill worth teaching and practicing.
When citing sources, a common misunderstanding among students is that Google or any other search engine is the source. They cite that they found the information on Google. Helping students understand that Google is a method of finding information and not a source requires repetition. I find that students need to hear this over and over again to fully understand the difference between a search engine and an actual web page source.
Trying to teach children to determine the credibility of a website is very difficult. I start by explaining to the students that anyone in the world can make a web page on any subject. I could make a website showing that the best tropical vacation would be to visit the North Pole in December. It could show tropical photos tied to a map of the North Pole. I could mix photos from around the world and tie them all to a visit to the North Pole. There is an excellent website to make this point about going on a Lake Michigan whale watching expedition. An excellent lesson is to send students to this website to collect key information. See how long it takes before one of your students questions the legitimacy of this site!
Teaching students to find information on the Internet is an important skill. The sooner we teach students how to find information by scanning pages, the better their learning will be for all research projects and activities throughout the school year.