I've known I want to lead a research-heavy class for some time now. After the first half of our class, I'm even more convinced it's the right way to go. Something I'm realizing is that I've been thinking about basically everything in the wrong way.
I'm one of those people that was all about teaching my students to use Wikipedia as a jumping-off point, but definitely wasn't going to let them use it as a cited source on papers and such. Exploring Wikipedia articles today thought opened my eyes to a whole new rad world, and I think I will allow it to be a source, with some conditions.
I had also never encountered the site: feature on Google before. I'm fascinated by the idea of using this feature to look at both sides of issues, particularly in history. True confessions, I stopped listening to the lecture for a minute because I found this fascinating article on a Vietnamese tourist site referencing the "war against American Imperialism" and got totally sucked into the stark contrast between this perspective and what I was taught about the Vietnam war.
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I think my favorite part about all of this is that it really is such a natural way to teach critical thinking skills to my students. Critical thinking I something that I do feel passionate about passing on to my students, because it wasn't something that I was taught in school, and I think I would have really benefitted from learning those skills earlier in life.
Overall, I have a long way to go in figuring out how to implement all of this. I have a lot of work to do.
This is fine.
Rene, I love your point about teaching kids critical thinking skills and how it could relate to using the Google Search tools. I totally agree that often teachers forget to teach kids the skills they need to think but it's one of the most important things that they will need when they leave high school, and I think it could absolutely be used by looking at different perspectives in Google. I remember being challenged in college to consider the other side and what their perspective may have been, but using something like this would have been so beneficial and really expanded the possibilities for discussion and thought. Great points and love the visuals :)
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