Digital Citizenship/Primary/Digital Literacy- Online research

Learn

ManyAnswers – this service uses the questions that students frequently ask through AnyQuestions and gives a clear explanation of how you might search for an answer. Look here to see anyone has asked your question before.

Learn how to structure a Boolean search by using Boolify and the Boolean Machine

Choose a topic or question and compare results from various content sources. Try a few different topics to see what the strengths of each resource are.

• DigitalNZ  for New Zealand content. Use the filters to narrow down your search.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica Online School Edition PreK-12 through Epic for general multimedia encyclopaedia content. A fantastic resource for readers at all levels. Your school should have a password or contact epic@tki.org.nz to find out what it is.
• Google searching – use the “search tips for kids” poster 
• Compare google results to those from a search engine for kids like KidRex  or Dogpile where you find results from across other search engines
• Search the school or public library catalogue – does it recommend websites? Are there any books that provide the kind of information you need? Does it contain links to other information sources?

Recall

Create a venn diagram, or similar, showing the similarities and differences between two different information sources.

Think

What does the perfect online or physical library look like? What does it need for me to be able to find out anything I need?

Act

For older students - Create a ‘Google A Day’ challenge for your classmates or an entry for ‘ManyAnswers’. Start with a question and tease it out, then show the best way to find the answer.

Expand

Keep building on this with different resources and topics.

Make sure you also visit the section on copyright and plagiarism to find links to help with teaching note-taking and referencing and the section on critical thinking with ideas for teaching students to think critically about the information they have found.

Contributors

Esther Casey - National Library of New Zealand