Web Search Strategies in Plain English Video

I'm a big fan of the Common Craft Show. Lee and Sachi Lefever make really easy to understand short videos on often complicated topics. Their latest video is about web search strategies. Check it out. The tips will help you improve your searching.

Citing Images

Mrs. Oshinski's class has been doing exciting work on a class wiki to study microbes.
Part of the assignment requires students to include images on the wiki pages they are creating. After going through the developing pages, I noticed that there are many people who aren't fully citing their images. I made a screencast with step-by-step directions for citing images. I hope this helps. Students, please see me if you have questions or need assistance.

2 down, 978 to go!

Mrs. Oshinski's classes have been working on a microbe research project. The students are building a wiki to share what they've learned about their particular microbe and the disease it causes.

As I walked through the lab today, Jack called me over as he was working on the computer. He said, "I'm really starting to like these databases." The students next to him turned around to agree to the sentiment. That just made my day!

And although those were the only two who expressed a new found appreciation for the quality and depth of information that can be found in databases, when I looked around the lab I saw that most of the students were taking notes and reading from the database resources that I had demonstrated the day before and linked into the wiki.

Using Databases

Databases are really valuable research tools. Students at Highland have a selection of databases that are designed especially for middle school students.

This screencast tutorial will walk you through how to use EBSCO's Middle Search product. It includes magazine articles, newspaper articles, reference materials, and multimedia. Check out the video and let me know what you think. I created the screencast using a free product called Jing.

Citing Sources

This morning at our faculty meeting, Ms. Hauman, Highland's technology teacher, and I talked to the Highland staff about citing sources. Our hope is that we can grow a school-wide expectation of citing sources in a consistent style through teachers modeling and adding requirements for citations in every assignment. The idea being if students need to cite sources every time they do research or use an image, that it will become a habit of mind in the way that they use information academically.

Highland's guide to creating a works cited can be found at:
http://www.d70schools.org/hlc/workscited.htm. There are also some really helpful how-to guides that Kim Hauman created for electronic resources that are integrated into the works cited guide.