First, I learned that the control+f function will allow me to search an entire web page for keywords. This would have saved me a lot of time scouring copious amounts of research articles and perhaps it will make research simpler for my students. Second, I learned that Twitter is more than just a place to share an opinion that nobody cares about. According to Jeff, it is the number one place that teachers go to share ideas and expertise. However, upon my first perusal, I found what seemed to be a lot of broad, unorganized information. Perhaps if I spend some more time with it, I'll be able to figure out how to find what I'm looking for.
What I found most helpful was the run through on how to use Google search and Wikipedia. I had no idea that the addition of the word "site" followed by a colon and the two letter abbreviation for a state or country narrows your search to sites that are from that designated state or country. Likewise, adding gov after the colon will narrow your search to government websites only. You can also limit results by specifying dates of publication, but you won't find anything prior to 1995 since the Internet did not exist before then. I also did not know that through https://news.google.com/newspapers, you can gain access to scanned copies of newspaper articles almost as far back as the invention of the printing press. As a teacher, I think this will be especially useful and exciting for teaching social studies.
The interactive exercise with Wikipedia was equally enlightening. To this day, I continually hear from teachers of all levels that Wikipedia is an unreliable source because anyone can edit it. Today, however, I was told otherwise. First of all, Wikipedia is an excellent source for references. At the bottom of every wiki page is a list of reputable sources that can be analyzed and cited for research. What's more, Wikipedia has its own rubric to classify the accuracy and reliability of information according to to its connection to reputable sources and how thoroughly it has been vetted. The fact that information is scrutinized by a host of people with diverse expertise, political, religious and philosophical persuasions actually works to eliminate bias or at least present information in a balanced way.
These are tools and strategies that can benefit me immediately and will likely be useful to my students in the near future.
I love the tools that you shared. There are some i didn't know myself and i consider myself very techie. The whole Site: search thing is new to me. As well as how to prove a wikipedia article may be a solid source or not. In fact, i never knew how the google algorithm really worked until he mentioned it! I never really cared. i thought it was all paid. i'm going to bookmark his class for sure for future reference. I learned a lot and i'm glad you did too. This is going to be a crazy fast year! We are going to learn way to much. I only hope i can retain half of it all. We will see...
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