Info Lit Session #3 : Evaluating Web Sites

I forgot to post this Powerpoint on the site back in April, when we were looking at how to decide if a Web site is good, accurate, and believable. Here's the link to the Powerpoint:

Web Site vs. Web Site : The 3-A Way to Finding the Best Web Sites

#4 : Meet MEL!

Who (or what) is MEL? It stands for Michigan Electronic Library and you can find it by clicking HERE or by going to mel.org. In MEL, you can find magazine and newspaper articles, sections from books, pictures, maps, and all kinds of other things. There are no ads....hurray!

When you use MEL at school, it recognizes our school computers, so you don't have to use a user name or password.

At home, you need a passcode, which can be one of these:

1. Your library card number (hint: memorize it! It will come in handy!)
2. Your parent's Michigan driver's license number. Don't worry....it is
immediately "encrypted" which means that no one can see it. MEL just
wants to make sure that it's being used by Michigan residents.
3. Secret way: Type in a letter followed by 12 numbers.

Info Lit Session #2 : Things to Remember!

Here are the important things to remember from Session #2 of EGR Info Lit for 5th Graders:

*Brainstorm before researching! Use the most important, technologically advanced tool ever.....your brain!
*Use keywords, not full sentences, to search. The first word is the most important.
*Use Boolean searching whenever possible.
*Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases. For example, "hammerhead shark."
*Mrs. McCaffrey has a very cute dog named Oliver Twist

Spring is a Great Time to Learn!

Welcome, Spring! As March brings longer, sunnier, warmer days, 5th graders will be learning a bit more about excellent research skills. This month, CREATING great search strategies is the focus.

We'll start out by talking about brainstorming and use graphic organizers, or word webs, to create visual pictures of search terms. Here are some links to graphic organizer templates:

Graphic Organizers

Students also are learning to fine-tune their searching to get better results. Here is a link to a very short yet informative video that explains how to do this in very simple terms:



Web Search Strategies in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Two Web sites that help to create word webs are:
Quintura
Visuwords

World Book Online

Thanks to our wonderful EGR Schools Foundation, we now have World Book Online, an amazing reseach tool that should be the first stop for any research project or to just browse around.  Because it is a subscription product, I won't post the user name and password here, but each student will receive the information from the school library or it can be obtained by contacting me at smccaffr@egrps.org or by contacting any EGR school library.

Here's a quick link to the page:  World Book Online.

Welcome, Digital Citizens!

We're starting an Information Literacy project and you're invited to read and blog along as our 5th graders learn skills to prepare them for our digital world.

Solid research skills are essential for students today, so we're focusing on doing efficient, age-appropriate searching.  Here are some search engines other than Google that are excellent choices for young researchers:

Kids Click - A search engine for kids created by librarians.  

Kids Space at the Internet Public Library - Well-designed and easy to use.