4. tips and tricks to navigate the web

http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewStandard/Preview/1944 

·       Standard: SC.912.L.14.1- “Describe the scientific theory of cells (cell theory) and relate the history of its discovery to the process of science.”

·       http://www.cellsalive.com/puzzles/crosswords/organelle1.htm

·       Educational Games

·       I would use this website to teach cell structure to my students in a fun educational way! It is an interactive site in which the students have to type out cell parts based on hints given. Studying isn’t very fun for most students in middle school but I feel like with this game they will enjoy learning about cell and cell structure a little more.

            I think that the internet is an extremely valuable tool in student research and I highly recommend it. Whenever a student doesn’t understand the meaning of a word they can easily look it up. When a student needs information about a historical person, it’s much easier to just type in the name. Not only does the internet give you results fast, it gives you many options as well. One problem with the internet is that it’s not always accurate. When you are researching something scientific, you have to make sure your sources are credible. Another huge problem students have with the internet is plagiarism. When the answers are in front of them, a lot of the students will just copy and paste instead of rephrasing in their own words. I think it is very important to be able to use the internet but I also don’t want my students depending on it, so I would teach them how to get their information from a library too.

           When I search for information on the internet the number one thing I do is make sure my information is credible. I look for sites that end in .edu, and .gov because I know they are educational and government sites, and I use a lot of the websites through my school website. Also, sites in which you can change information in the article (such as Wikipedia) I know are not credible sources because anyone can change the content. Listening to the podcast I realized that I do a lot of the same things talked about; I look at the content, I make sure the spelling is correct, and usually when a site is biased it is based on opinion. One thing I didn’t pay attention to is ads. I never thought that they were a problem because I usually just ignore them. I think it is important to teach my students to look out for them.

           I learned a few new skills from working on the Web Hunt assignment. There are a lot of tips and tricks you can do to specify your search results. For example, if you want to search a certain time period you would type out “date…end date” and fill it in with the corresponding dates you wish to find out. Also I learned that when you put things in quotations it searches for direct quotes within the quotations. Another one of my new favorite tips is being able to exclude sites with the “-“sign before the site you don’t want to pop up. This assignment helped me realize I can more easily find what I need with a few tricks.

1.  Find a free website maker that students could use to create their own website
2.   Find a credible medical website in which students can type in symptoms and find out what disease relates to it.

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