The most striking revelation I had during this course came when I was working on Application 4. As I looked through the website “Britain For Americans”, I quickly noticed something was off. I thought it was humorous, but in terms of being good for research on the culture of Great Britain, it terribly wrong. The big revelation came when I typed in the website to Google and it was the first result that came up.
This was such a big revelation because I could see myself very easily falling victim to it. My tendency has become, thanks to the internet, to finding information as quickly as possible. “Nearly good” is better than “best” provided that it is found quickly. I know that my students search the same way. The big lesson for me in this course was that I need to rethink both how I search and how I teach students to find information.
There is great value in modeling good research techniques. On top of taking it slowly, a lot can be gained by taking time to explore sources in depth rather than skimming the first few websites that are found.
Next fall, the first unit in my AP Language class is a literary criticism research paper. I plan on spending as much time on the process with students as I will on their finished product. This summer, I would like to explore some websites they could use to search for information on literary criticism so I will be able to point them in the right direction this fall.
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