Thing 8: Databases

I am finally in the home stretch of History Day--yeah! It's due this week, and I am ready to see the products of months of work. Anyway, teaching students research is always an interesting process. Most students come to us only using the Internet to research --and that's really all they do. If it's not on their first Google search, then it must not exist and they need a new topic--at least that's what they say. I have to say that's one thing that History Day has been great for--pushing students out of their element and making them search a variety of sources. Once students start using databases, it can be an amazing light bulb turning on moment. I'm wondering if this process of using a variety of sources could start ealier. I am kind of concerned that students come to high school and can only research by using google. It can be a great starting point, but I believe rsearch skills need to be taught earlier.
I have taught my students a variety of types of databases and how to use them. One of my favorites for them was Historical Newspapers.This is a fairly cool site, because it can show you actual papers of the time-they have been scanned in. This is an awesome place to show students how to look for primary sources, because these are actual artciles of the time period.

Thing 7

In looking at all the different search engines available, I feel like I have a lot of new places to help students dig for information online. I liked the list of 50 search engines to try--I think we all get in a rut with google and yahoo, and after playing with some of these, I like the multimedia sources, as a way to get a new perspective on a topic.

Team Teaching for History Day

After finding ourselves answering the same questions and fixing the same issues over and over again for our History Day Projects, Connie (our school media specialist) and I decided to do some team teaching on some key concepts. We went over primary and secondary sources, how to do better key word searches, what places to use to find better info., annotated bibliography, and process paper writing. We're hoping that our efforts will be seen as students progress through this process.