Driving to a Website: a Metaphor for Search Engines and Website Navigation
Process is important and a key component of inquiry learning. I realized that in the library I could be looking at highlighting the research process differently.
In a team meeting with our Grade 4 teachers, Ben (@bgrundy) asked if I could do something more hands-on to emphasis to kids the difference between search engines and websites. They were finding that students were citing 'Google' as their source of information since Google now provides a larger summary blurb when searching some key terms, so instead of visiting the web page the students only took notes from the summary blurb.
Throughout the discussion, Tina (@CMMorton) shared that she uses the metaphor of a taxi to represent search engines. This metaphor mixed perfectly with the metaphor I had been using for the kids for the concept of the internet being a place that is a map that requires an address to reach the correct place.
Building on this metaphor, I sought resources from our generous kindergarten team who loaned me their IKEA road map carpet, some building blocks that became addresses for websites and couple of dump trucks that changed into taxis. My internet town was ready for inquiry!
Students brought their iPads and were given some guiding questions to help them to focus on the inquiry 'Search Engine vs Website'. Working in pairs, they were encouraged to use the search terms and visit the URL addresses on the papers plus to consider using the different search engines. Once they reflected, they could describe the difference between the two and recognize the purpose of the metaphor
Overall, I found that this process helped students to solidfy their understanding of the part of the research process plus they noticed that results were different. This will eventually lead to a lesson on how the internet and it's algorithms work.
In a team meeting with our Grade 4 teachers, Ben (@bgrundy) asked if I could do something more hands-on to emphasis to kids the difference between search engines and websites. They were finding that students were citing 'Google' as their source of information since Google now provides a larger summary blurb when searching some key terms, so instead of visiting the web page the students only took notes from the summary blurb.
Throughout the discussion, Tina (@CMMorton) shared that she uses the metaphor of a taxi to represent search engines. This metaphor mixed perfectly with the metaphor I had been using for the kids for the concept of the internet being a place that is a map that requires an address to reach the correct place.
Building on this metaphor, I sought resources from our generous kindergarten team who loaned me their IKEA road map carpet, some building blocks that became addresses for websites and couple of dump trucks that changed into taxis. My internet town was ready for inquiry!
Students brought their iPads and were given some guiding questions to help them to focus on the inquiry 'Search Engine vs Website'. Working in pairs, they were encouraged to use the search terms and visit the URL addresses on the papers plus to consider using the different search engines. Once they reflected, they could describe the difference between the two and recognize the purpose of the metaphor
Overall, I found that this process helped students to solidfy their understanding of the part of the research process plus they noticed that results were different. This will eventually lead to a lesson on how the internet and it's algorithms work.
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