Explorer Research at the End of Day Two

Mrs. Henderson and I began her Explorers project with the fourth grade on Monday.  I joined their classroom to teach each of the three classes how to use and why they should use online encyclopedias to start their research.  My rationale was that students need background information they can trust before they can evaluate whether or not information found using a search engine is trustworthy.

I began the discussion by explaining that in days of old writers researched their material thoroughly.  Then they submitted their manuscripts to publishers who evaluated their worth.  They in turn had editors double-check the writer's facts for accuracy.  As a result, the users could trust that the information in the published book was factual.

Today, of course, anyone can be an author, either on the web or of a published book.  The safeties for verifying accuracy of  information may not be in place.  For one class I created a wiki on DaSean Butler just to demonstrate how easy it is to create a web resource on a subject one knows little about.

After I showed the classes the features on World Book Online and Grolier Online, we looked at articles on the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.  Next, we looked at the bogus explorer site All About Explorers.  The kids at first thought that the information was obviously false.  Then I asked them if they would think the information was false if they had not read the other reputable articles about Vespucci.  They agreed that they would probably think the information was true.

I was very impressed with the children's reasoning skills. This is the first out of four years' students that have been able to accurately express what is wrong with information in the site.  While working with me in the library yesterday, several students told me that they found certain pieces of information on other websites, but that they needed to verify the information on other sites.  One boy found a book the biography section that's preface said the facts presented in the book were not true but based on the life of Marco Polo.  Guess what book is being removed from the biography section?