How often have we heard a teacher or Professor say, "Wikipedia cannot be used as a source for any of your school work"? It's hard to keep count!
The
Internet has made it very easy for students to find information, and it can
effortlessly replace searching the library for primary and secondary sources.
How can a student know what a teacher considers reliable or untrustworthy? In
CURR 314, we learn about the proper ways to assess students and how to clearly
convey what the end product should be like. It is also important to provide directions explaining what
is expected. In this context, I feel like a teacher should always clarify what
kind of sources can be utilized in his or her classroom. Maybe, even providing
a list of the types of sources they approve of.
I
think a good website teachers, specifically Social Studies teachers, could
recommend is JSTOR,
which is an accredited source of journal articles. Often times, the school
district libraries have memberships to online archives like this. (It is
important to check out what is available to students in the school you might be
working in.) The articles found on this website can be filtered to show
scholarly reviewed articles, this is great for credibility. Not only should the
teacher suggest sources, she should explain what is unacceptable and why. I
think it is a good idea for teachers to model what they are looking for to the
students. “Modeling”, which we have learned about in other CURR classes, is a
great way to clarify assignments to students. Students should know what is ok
and not okay with information the cite from online sources.
I love using online databases, as history majors we use them often! I agree that we should show students how to utilize sources that are reliable and make writing easier. Instead of telling them there are inappropriate I agree that we should show them what sites really don't enhance a paper.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is important for a teacher to model what they deem appropriate for their students. It is a simple way to avoid misunderstandings and also makes it obvious to students of their expectations.
ReplyDeletePaige,
ReplyDeleteFinding reliable sources can definitely be a challenge sometimes. I find the hardest part of doing any research is finding credible, reliable sources. I think that you bring up a really good point-perhaps teachers need to be more clear in terms of what the will accept and regard as credible sources. Students should definitely be exposed to online databases as you mentioned, like jstor and and ebsco. Also, google has a really great filter setting that allows you to specify which types of sites will appear during a search. For example, when doing research, I specify that I only want sites ending in "edu." This really helps me filter out some of the less credible sources!