Chris Plantone's Portfolio Page

Navigation links: ETAP 623 Fall 2021 (Zhang) | Searching for Sources Mini-Course

About Me

I taught Social Studies, but now I am an Educational Technology Coordinator. I teach other teachers how to properly use technology in the classroom.

Non-education-related, I closely follow everything Marvel, love to listen to Alternative Rock, and I am a passionate Buffalo Bills fan.

My Topic and Purpose

Through my experience in education, I have witnessed students of various ages and backgrounds commit to a shallow interpretation of reading anything on a digital device. Texting, social media, and other technology applications have led kids to analyze and communicate as quickly as possible. So when it comes to researching a given topic, students grab the information that comes up first, is easy to read, and generally has pictures to look at without considering if the content is factual. They're credible sources that students should utilize and they're websites they should avoid due to bias and incorrect information, but they lack the expertise to tell which is which.

The purpose of this mini-course will be to educate teachers on conducting instruction focused on your students searching for the right sources on the world wide web and synthesize this newfound information in a concise way.

Learning Outcomes

You will learn how to search for reliable sources
You will learn how to teach this to your students
You will learn what your students should do with the information they found.

Needs Assessment

Instructional Problem - The world wide web allows anyone with access to a computer, laptop, smartphone, or other digital devices, the ability to search for thousands of documents that could help build a constructed response to a complex question, however, students go for the easy route to cut and paste a questionable source and won’t think twice about it. Where does this error start? Technology is creeping lower and lower on the age scale that by the time they enter grade school, a student is familiar with digital devices that are similar to the ones used in class. Parental supervision (or lack of it) and socioeconomic status now become factors in how a child uses technology which leads to a wide range of experience (Erikson Institute, 2018). You may have students who can help troubleshoot your smartboard, but many use the internet for communication (which is often short and brief) and information (which is expected to be fast and easy to understand). This shallow approach to digital devices has had a negative experience for adolescents as they get caught up in misinformation and the inability to comprehend digital texts (Annisette, 2017).

Students need to be redirected back to the fact that the internet has a wealth of information so the right source may not be the first one that pops up or the shortest. It takes metacognitive skills to analyze and pluck the right sources to compose a well-thought-out response. Information problem solving (IPS) requires a strategy from the reader to scan, process, and organize the content that not every student knows how to do correctly. (Walraven et al., 2009) A criteria needs to be established on how to find reliable sources from ones to avoid so each student may act as a gatekeeper and allow only the right information to pass.

Guidance should be provided on how to synthesize all of this new found data in a way that explains to the reader the answer that was found by the student. Comprehending multiple sources is a 21st-century skill that is becoming more valuable, so we must prepare the future what to do when they encounter multiple authors, each with their own biases and various reasons for publishing their texts. (Lawless et al., 2012). Acquiring all of this knowledge would be useless without having a way to combine their evidence into a cohesive argument.

What is to be learned - I am hoping this course will provide strategies so your students can succeed when online. It all starts with you, I will teach you techniques when encountering multiple web pages, how to evaluate the key content to obtain your goal, and organize the information in a way that makes sense so you may relay this back to your classrooms.

Analysis of the Learner and Context

Learner Analysis - This course is for educators who can relate to the instructional problem described above. If you feel your students’ lack of evaluation tampers with the quality when researching a topic on a digital device, perhaps it is because they were not correctly taught how to navigate the internet. This course is two-fold, I am teaching you but I am also providing you with information and skills so you can appropriately teach your students this information.

Most students prefer using Google when researching any kind of web material (Taylor & Dalal, 2014) so we will focus on that specific search engine with some alternatives. There is no specific student demographic that I am targeting, but some of my materials may be better for a secondary setting while elementary teachers may have to edit my resources to meet their audience. You or your students do not need any fancy laptop or application when conducting searching for the right sources, just a digital device that has access to the internet. You will need a google account to access the assignments and activities. I know there is quite a range when it comes to technical expertise, so I am aiming to accommodate educators who may not have knowledge but have to drive to try some new methods that may help you in your classroom and even your day-to-day life.

Performance-Based Objectives

Participants will be able to examine sources on the internet and categorize them into reliable and unreliable sources.
Participants will be able to plan how they will demonstrate these online skills to students in their classroom.
Participants will be able to prepare specific questions that will challenge their students in order to dig deeper and find the right online sources.
Participants will guide their students to integrate the information found into a well-thought-out answer.

Task Analysis

Unit 1: Sorting Your Sources - Given how vast the internet is, you will analyze what makes a source reliable or unreliable and how to distinguish between the two.

Look for quality evidence in a source
Be aware of red flags in a source
Analyze a reliable and unreliable source on the same topic

Unit 2: Students and Sources - Apply your new knowledge into instruction that will meet the needs of your students in order to give them direction when it is their time to search.

Translate what you learned to a topic/assignment they can understand
Become familiar with the CARP Graphic Organizer
Determine how fishy your source is by filling out CARP

Unit 3: Synthesizing Your Sources - After finding the right source, you will interpret the source to identify what is important and how you can modify it for your class.

Try and find more sources that deal with your research question
Understand the importance of summarizing multiple sources
Attempt to create a claim that is backed up by main ideas and supported by evidence found in your sources

Curriculum Map

References and Resources

Annisette, L. E., & Lafreniere, K. D. (2017). Social media, texting, and personality: A test of the shallowing hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 154–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.02.043

Erikson Institute. (2018). Technology and young children in the digital age. Retrieved September 25, 2021, from https://www.erikson.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Erikson-Institute-Technology-and-Young-Children-Survey.pdf.

Lawless, Kimberly & Goldman, Susan & Gomez, Kimberley & Manning, Flori & Braasch, Jason. (2012). Assessing multiple source comprehension through evidence-centered design. Reaching an understanding: Innovations in how we view reading assessment. 3-17.

Taylor, A., & Dalal, H. A. (2014). Information Literacy Standards and the World Wide Web: Results from a Student Survey on Evaluation of Internet Information Sources. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 19(4).

Walraven, A., Brand-Gruwel, S., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2009). How students evaluate information and sources when searching the world Wide web for information. Computers & Education, 52(1), 234–246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.08.003