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 RESEARCH PROJECT: TEACHING WEB SITE EVALUATION SKILLS FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL

  

HYPOTHESIS:

Seventh grade advanced students who are given instruction on evaluating web-sites will score better on history achievement tests than they will when they do web-based research without instruction.

BROAD RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

Can students be taught to evaluate web-sites for validity, including, but not limited to readability, accuracy of information, and completeness of information?
What other study skills must students have to successfully conduct a web-based research project?
Does instruction before doing a web-based research assignment result in better final assessment scores than research done without previous instruction in judging the validity of web-sites?
How does one best judge the validity of web-sites?

Are these skills transferable? That is, once students learn to evaluate web sites, can they evaluate books, printed material, radio, and television??

Alternatively, can we use books, articles, radio, and TV as tools to lean web evaluation?

What are the most effective training tools to use? Consider staring with:

·       Prepared lists of web sites with varying degrees of reliability to test or train students.

·       Prepared score cards with factors to evaluate at site.




POSSIBLE SITES AND SUBJECTS:

Middle school students at a local middle school

DATA COLLECTION STRATEGIES:

Written test based on social studies standards
Questionnaires
Observations

Existing literature, such as Alan Novembers articles.

Interviewing students, teachers, parents, and other interested parties.

Interview middle school teachers for their favorite sites and why.



INCREASED FOCUS: NARROWER DATA COLLECTION:

Two advanced classes at Vernon E. Greer Middle School in Galt, California
Students in these classes have been randomly assigned and are either high achieving, identified as GATE, or members of the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) class
I teach both classes
District-developed common assessments based on the State Social Studies Standards.
Questionnaires will be completed by participating students
Teacher observations will also be made

MORE FOCUSED QUESTIONS:

What particular qualities are important in recognizing a useful web-site?
How can students be taught to recognize these qualities?
Does the examination of the validity of a web-site lead to greater student achievement?

  

NOTE: Willie and I are collaborating on this project. This site is an update of her posting on 3/31/03. We added more questions to the Broad Research Questions and to the data collection Strategies. We consider whether these evaluation skills would be transferable to other media, and can other media be used as a tool to teach evaluation of webs.  Also, we included another obvious data source, interview of middle school teachers for their best sites and why.

 

After the most recent assignment on SIMULATIONS, we may change our project to developing means to evaluate, revise, and apply the simulators offered on the market for social studies teachers.   After spending over a decade attending social studies teachers conferences, we noticed a bewildering array of very expensive kits offered by various publishers.  So how does a teacher, especially a beginning teacher, decide how to invest their limited budget?

Stay tuned. Share your concerns.