Journal 8

Ferrell, K. (2011). Finding the truth about the pacific tree octopus. Learning and Leading, 39. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/issues/Learning_Connections_Find_the_truth_about_the_Pacific_tree_octopus.asp


I have been guilty of using Google to search a topic and looking at the top three hits. Very often I have taken it for granted that many others do the same and perpetuate the same good or perhaps not so good websites. I appreciate how this article makes you reflect on your own researching practice, in addition to giving a good example on how to instill good researching habits in students.

Q1 How do you as an educator model good researching techniques?
To often teachers do all of the learning when teaching. We talk and talk and talk. We propose a question suggest answers listen for a little bit then give them the answer or in this case research information. I know I am guilty of doing this. Often I feel as though there is not enough time to get through all of the standards , so, I feed them the information. Obviously not best practice. The instructor in this article takes a much better approach in teaching researching techniques. First, he begins by creating a question that knows will lead into the lesson. Next, he gives the students an opportunity to discover the problems with their researching techniques. Then, once he has them engaged, he begins to unfold the researching lesson and begins to facilitate a discussion that includes the students in learning how to find reputable websites through good researching techniques. In the end, the instructor discovered that by allowing the students to learn through doing, they retained the lesson better.

Q2 How will you teach students what is credible information?
This article reaffirmed to me how important it is to teach students that everything on the Internet is not credible. We must always use our brains and ask ourselves does this seem possible? In addition, we should always put sites to the 5w’s test, who, what, when, where, why, and look at the URL suffixes (ed.gov, etc).