Journal 8

    

  Ferrell, K. (2011). Find the truth about the pacific tree octopus. Learning & Leading with Technology,1(39), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-august-2011.aspx

 Find the Truth about the Pacific Tree Octopus NETS-T: 1,2, & 3

h   Finding the Truth about the Pacific Tree Octopus isn't actually about the Pacific Tree Octopus. It's about how a fourth grade class learned how to research information on the internet. Their teacher asked them to look up information about the octopus. The students' first instinct was to use google and click on the first web site google gave the students for information. The students came back with information that was highly inaccurate. The teacher then showed the students how to find the right sites and gather the right information.

    

    The fourth graders in this class decided that the first link that google search gave them was the best one to find information about Pacific Tree Octopus'. The information the students came back with sounded like this: "Christopher Columbus was born in 1951in Sydney, Australia," or "The Pacific Northwest tree octopus (Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America." There were other examples just like these. After the teacher had a class discussion about the inaccurate findings, the students began to realize how wrong some of the information was. The teacher proceeded to show them the right way to search for information. The teacher told them to look for the 5w's: what, where, when who, and why. The teacher also described url suffixes: edu, gov., etc. The students then found sites with information that was accurate from teachers who created the sites for students. This lesson on searching for information, helped the students complete their projects correctly.

    I believe that teaching the correct use of the internet to find information through trial and error is a great strategy to have students learn first hand, rather then through written instruction. I believe this was a great way to teach his students because the students had to learn the hard way by going down the wrong path before finding the right one to find information. Thus, the students will never forget this lesson and the students will think twice before using the first thing that pops up.Doing it this way has a lasting impact on the students. 

   1. How can other teachers use this lesson in their own classrooms?

    Other teachers can use this lesson to start off the first project that requires research. Simply tell the students the topic and basic guidelines needed for the research project. From here the teachers can do what this teacher in the article did and have the whole class go over the information they found on the internet and see how accurate it is. Next, these teachers can perform whole class correction and show the students the right way of finding information on the internet.

   2. What are some correct ways of searching for accurate information on the web? 

    One correct method is looking at the suffixes in the url of a site. Some good suffixes to look for are edu or gov. Another way to make sure the site is accurate is to cross-reference it to other sites that have similar information. Finally, use the 5w's of what, where, who, when, and why, when looking up information on the internet.