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• Hiroshima’s Survivors: The Last Generation
  Organization: The World, Public Radio International (PRI)

  A four-part series, ‘Hiroshima’s Survivors: The Last Generation,’ introduces listeners to some of the over 250,000 ‘hibakusha,’ or A-bomb survivors still living.” (PRI) The survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II speak about their experiences. To listen to an archive of The World by subject or live date, click here.

• Finding Information on the Internet
  Organization: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

  This tutorial explains how to use the Internet to locate specialized information. Learn how to search effectively, how to cite electronic resources and how to evaluate web pages. A glossary of Internet terms is included.

• Statue of Liberty National Monument
  Organization: National Park Service (NPS)

  “Located in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was a gift of international friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is one of the most universal symbols of political freedom and democracy.” (NPS)

Historical fiction allowed us to meet many curricular goals in both English and social studies, and it was a replacement for the traditional MLA-style research paper.  As you will see from the project sheet the students had to select a persona to assume and write that person’s story, entering his or her life no earlier than 1938 and then leaving the character by 1946.  During the war years (1939-’45) this person had to be at least 16 so that the character is a young adult during the war — and possibly serving the nation at some point.  If the character was an immigrant that person’s story had to take into account the legislation of the early ’20s which curtailed immigration to the U.S. substantially.

You will notice that we did not allow students to assume a Japanese persona.  This was because our mentor text for the unit was When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka.  The students needed to research and create their characters and in her novel Ms. Otsuka had done the research already.  (By the way, if you’ve never read it you should…it’s a fantastic book and students WILL respond to it!)

The final product was four 5-page (approx.) chapters corresponding to four different mini-eras of World War II.  Over time the character had to develop and mature, react appropriately to the news of the war or to being a part of the war, and be historically accurate the whole time.  This is where the research paper skills are employed.

To begin the project the kids had to get an idea of what 1938 United States was like, so Mary and I put some print and electronic resources into learning  stations (most were hosted on Moodle).  Using a guided inquiry process the students learned about the nation in ’38 and came up the the questions that they still needed answers to in order to get a more full picture.  After this process the kids were ready to research and write.

Mary and I connected with our friend and colleague Marci Zane (marcizane on Twitter) of the IMC/Library to teach research skills.  Students think that they know how to search, but in reality we needed to teach them how to use search engines.  So for a few days that winter Marci came to our class and taught them how to key word search, how to narrow searches and how to search in and across the subscription databases that Hunterdon Central has.  Without her help the project would not have been of the high quality that it was.  If you are going to replicate this in your school then reach out to library staff and get them in class to help you.

Then after that the kids started to write Chapter 1,  and they posted their drafts (incomplete at the time) to a Moodle forum.  We taught them how to peer edit and give constructive criticism since the suggested revisions were going to also be posted in the Moodle forum.  As suggestions came in the students revised their writing, and as due dates came and went Mary and I gave formative assessment feedback on each chapter’s draft.

After the chapter 4 formative feedback had been given the students worked on their final products.   The four chapters had to be put into a book format, reflect the suggestions and revisions from formative feedback and constructive criticism and then get uploaded to us for the final, summative assessment.

I know that the kids cared about this assignment because the characters that they created were multi-dimensional, and I was fully invested in these “people” and their stories.  The kids were careful about historical accuracy and really tried to write creatively and vividly.  Some of them drew upon their own family’s  heritage to write their stories, and some of them created a whole new world.  But all of them had to do significant research to get a historically accurate narrative and at the end of the project their research skills, especially electronically, showed improvement.

And the best part about the whole deal was that I didn’t have to read one flat, unimaginative, uncreative research paper.  At all. 

As always here are our materials.  For this project we don’t have too much because much of it was hosted on Moodle.  If you have questions just contact me.

World War II Historical Fiction Project

Historical Fiction WWII
Historical Fiction Rubric

When going online for assignments, you have to have FEAR:

Find -Don’t just search, find!
Evaluate - Don’t believe everything that you read!
Assess - Don’t infringe copyright!
Report - Don’t use ideas or media without proper attribution!

Get the full story on this and other important skills at http://www.fhsu.edu/library/tlc/tutorials.

TA

Tips and Strategies

• Use the Tab function in your browser.  Rather than opening up multiple windows, opening new tabs (apple-t on macs) is far easier.  This way, when you are searching, you can easily switch between tabs rather than clogging up your desktop with multiple browser pages.
• When using Google to search the internet, you can use the minus sign [ - ] to exclude specific search results.  So if you want to search for a salsa recipe, but dislike cilantro, and want to find only those recipes that did without that tasty herb, you could type the following: salsa recipe -cilantro.  You can test this by first searching for salsa recipe–which delivers about 1,420,000 results, and then searching for salsa recipe -cilantro–which delivers about 1,220,000 results.  Give it a try!
• When looking for a specific word on a page, use the Apple-F (or Find from the Edit drop down menu) function.  This function will highlight a specific word or phrase in a webpage.  Very useful when you are looking for specific information on a large page with a lot of text.
• In the Google search field you can type define: and then a word to quickly see many definitions that exist online, and if you are not sure of a word, you can go to…
• Reverse Dictionary (http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml) which allows users to type in a list of words (or just one) and the site retrieves other words that relate to the words you typed in the search field.  This is a great tool when you can recall one or more words of a specific sort, but can’t quite recall the exact one you need.
• Another interesting tip is using site: and then enter a website and then your search term.  Site: restricts your search to just that website.  So if you wanted to find information on your new iPhone, but only wanted official documentation from Apple, you could type: site:apple.com iphone.
• filetype: allows you to just search for a specific type of file and exclude everything else. To build on the above example, if you wanted to search for what PDFs existed on Apple’s site about the iphone, you could type: site:apple.com filetype:pdf iphone.
• Finally one really cool tool that I have never used is the Show Options tool (found below the search field on Google).  By clicking this, a menu opens up on the left of the screen, and from here you can select several options.  This is better to just explore yourself, but one really helpful tool (at least for me) was the “related searches” tool.  When you click on “related searches,” the page displays a list of other searches, different but still similar to your own.  A good tool when you can’t find what you want and would like to see other searches that offer different ways of finding the information you need.
  

  An image of the "Show Options" tool on the Google search page.

I hope this is helpful!  Dan Russel has posted this entire presentation online as a PDF, so if you want to read the full version, go to his google page linked at the beginning of this post, and click on the “Become a Super Internet Searcher” link at the bottom of his page.

Remember that there are a few things that you can do to your search when you are wanting key words to be noticed. Tweek your search a little so that it will be more effective.

For one, when you are trying to find an exact phrase, you will need to put them into quotations. For instance, you may want to find the lyrics to a song. What you should do is type it in the  search bar like this: “if everybody cared” lyrics. From there, you would be taken to Nickelback’s If Everybody Cared song lyrics.

If there are certain keywords that you want to point out in the search to emphasis that particular word or words, you would put a (+) in it. For instance, Nickelback +if +everybody +cared lyrics, would be the appropriate formula.

Then of course there are particular subjects or words that you find unnecessary for the search and there is a way that you can keep those words out. By using a (-) sign, you can illiminate these words. Here is an example,  nickelback -playlist -songs -music +if +everybody +cared lyrics.

If there are words that are okay to include in the search or perhaps you don’t mind a broad variety of topics on that one subject you can capitalize OR in your search. An example of this may be Nickelback song OR lyrics for If Everybody Cared

These hints should make your Internet search much easier and more effective.

I read another article “Study: Google does a Brain Good” on the CNN website which discussed this study and others. Bottom-line is that it is extremely important to keep the mind active as we age. Taking on mentally challenging tasks could improve brain health. Brain teasers, such such as Nintendo’s Brain Age game and computer programs are geared towards boomers and aging adults. Crossword puzzles, Sodoku and video games are also effective ways to keep the brain sharp.

So, now we have one more reason to be on the internet…we’re not wasting time…we’re exercising our brains! Enjoy!!!!

Google has added an autosuggest feature on the main search page. The main change is fewer exact matches, when searching, so this will benefit typical in-a-hurry users.  More videos will come up in results, because of a shift in the way Google is indexing behind the scenes. Over in Google Books, post 1922 published works will have more full views. I was able to verify a technical book from the 1960s with this tool.

In Google Maps, try a topic search, like yarn in Toronto, to see what results you will get. I can see this being helpful when you are travelling to an unfamiliar city but you overwhelmingly need your coffee fix from Starbucks.

A trio of new social search engines are on the horizon. Wikia Search has different approach and, as a searcher, you can comment on records or delete/undelete results. Maybe you work for rival company X and you want competitor company Y to be invisible, so you could delete them in Wikia results. My librarian community at Slaw wrote about this new application previously.

Spokeo and Me.dium are the other search engines. Both require you to sign up as a user, in order to search and kick the tires on their new product. Me.dium also forced me to download a toolbar, which struck me as too invasive.

Update, November 8, 2008: The Me.dium that I previewed is not available. A new engine will be unveiled soon. On a technical note, to uninstall toolbars in Firefox, see Tools > Add-Ons. And for a different perspective on social search engines see Ted Tjaden’s post.

I got great results with Spokeo. I found out about my second cousin’s esotoric hobbies (butterly collecting community on a small web site), and my long lost friend on a Facebook type application in Asia. Spokeo boasts that it indexes across databases like Amazon wish lists, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Webshots, Flickr, and LinkedIn.

I don’t think I will go back to these search engines but I may be hearing about it more in the next few years. -Brenda

While this wassuper-adorable of them, other, less cute consequences of the rain included the flooding of my library’s consortium office.  This meant that, among other problems, some of our computer functions were down.  For some reason, this included the internet in the youth services department.

A few patrons throughout the day had problems due to this lack of connectivity, but for the most part, things went smoothly until about 4:00.  I was busy helping a girl looking for books about ghosts, when a boy, about 8 years old, came up to the desk.  Since I was obviously busy, he went to the other person on desk.  This was sort of a mistake on his part, as she’s kind of mean.

He asked her, somewhat politely, “what’s wrong with the internet,” ro which she oh-so-sweetly replied, ”I don’t know.”  He looked confused, but persevered. 

“I have a homework assignment and I need the internet,” he tells her.  She didn’t exactly soften up, but she managed to at least ask him what the assignment is.  “I have to find the syntonyms and antonyms of all these words,” he said, holding up a worksheet.  “Use a book,” she said and turned away to help another patron. 

Looking kind of stunned (and who wouldn’t be, after such a reception?), he walked away, presumably to talk to his baby-sitter who was helping him with homework.  I was still with my patron, or I would have immediately lent a hand, but luckily another librarian happened to be out on the floor at the time and I noticed her showing him how to use a Thesaurus a few minutes later.

About twenty minutes passed, and I was busily sorting through piles of storytime DVD’s when the boy’s baby-sitter came up to te desk.  She explained that he was having trouble using the Thesaurus and couldn’t find two of the words he needed.  Since it was only two words, I offered to look them up for him.  I figured I would take the opportunity to show him a few good sites for something like this.  A few minutes later, he came back up to the desk. 

“I hear you need to find two more words,” I say.  He shakes his head.  “I need to find fifteen words,” he says, holding out his worksheet. 

Ok, even if I had time to help him with that, I wasn’t going to just sit there and do his homework for him.  That pretty much fits into my definition of “cheating.”  So instead of going to the website I’d been planning to show him, I asked him if he needed help with the thesaurus.  He said he was having trouble with it, so I offered to come back and help him get started.

While I was trying to find a child-friendly thesaurus (rather than the giant Webster’s with the tiny type he’d been trying to use), I heard him complainging to his baby-sitter.  “This is so stupid, I need the internet for this, I don’t want to do it this way,” and on and on in that vein. 

At this point, I was getting a little annoyed because a) like I said, I’m not going to do his homework for him and b) that kind of attitude just makes homework worse.  But he’s not my child, student, or baby-sitting charge, so I pasted on a smile and ignored his negativity.

I sat down with my nice Scholastic picture thesaurus and opened it up.  Together, we found a few words, and I showed him how to use a few different features of the Thesaurus.  Instead of saying thank you, or engaging with the process at all, he tells me “This doesn’t work, I need the internet.”

Here’s my point in relating this little drama, something I don’t much like to do, as it seems a violation of patron privacy or something: Despite the multiple studies lately saying how the internet and Google are changing the way we think, read, and process information, I really haven’t bought too much into any of them.  I mean, yes, obviously the way we search for information on the web is different from the way we use books and other print resources.  But then, the way we search for information in an encyclopedia is different from the way we search for it in a biography, for example. 

I always saw the internet as another great tool to add to an ever-growing list of resources.  I still do.  I never believed it was making us stupid, or lazy, or changing the way our brain actually functions as a whole.  But after this incident, I’m beginning to wonder what the effect of an “internet brain” will have on the generations who learn how to use it before they understand the principles behind conducting a search, the types of things you learn when your 2nd grade teacher shows you how to look up words in a thesaurus or ideas in an encyclopia.

Is assigning students homework which utilizes the internet first and foremost teaching them to always take the easy way out when it comes to research?  Let’s face it, most of us are already lazy when it comes to searching for information: will teaching kids to go to Google before they’ve mastered the fundamental principles of “looking stuff up” keep them from being able to function in situations where the “hard way” is the only way?

Not that the easy way’s the bad way; I would personally go to an online thesaurus before I picked up Webster’s.  But situations like this make me think about that episode of South Park where the internet dies and everyone freaks out.  Sometimes I feel like we’re teaching kids to rely too heavily on the internet, and that kind of worries me.