Chapter 5 discusses more of the current topics that we, as students and future educators, come across everyday. The first point that I would like to mention is the idea of the "limitless information" we can obtain on the internet. Statistics in the textbook show that "by May 2005, the search engine Google reported it was indexing over eight billion Web pages, with the number growing everyday" (page114). That amount surprised me and I can't even imagine how large the number is now in 2012.
With the factor of limitless information on the internet, it is very important to determine which sources are valid or invalid. For example, for researching topics in sociology, is it smart to use Wikipedia, or the ProQuest search engine for scholarly journals on sociology. For us, the answer would be an obvious one, for we were taught how to look up valid sources to support our information. But personally, I feel it's okay to look at something on Wikipedia, to at the very least find out the definition of a term or concept, and with that in mind, one can research valid sources.
In addition to understanding the limitless findings on the internet and how to determine which sources are reliable, it is very important to stress about giving credit where credit is due. St. John's as well as many other colleges, have taken serious steps to avoid and punish those who plagiarize. My question would be, how to explain the affects of plagiarism to elementary school children. How do we show them that it is okay to look information to support homework or projects/essays they may be working on, but set that distinction between looking up information and using that very information that is not your own in your work.
Additional questions:
1. Has anyone completed a web-quest before?
No, I have seen some online and they do look like a great learning tool
ReplyDelete