It is always helpful to have research supporting programmes – it gives credibility to the work we are doing. This year at school we have decided to give prominence to a little workshop I used to give to grades 5 – 7 only – it is called “3 steps before Google”. Now we give this workshop and have supporting slides and posters available to all Middle School teachers as well as upper primary.
One workshop I attended at IASL conference yesterday was “A Comparative Analysis of Information Seeking Behaviour of Canadian and International Secondary School Graduates Entering a University” by Jamshid Beheshti (Canada), Joan Barttlett (Canada), Anna Couch (Canada), Cynthia Kumah (Canada).
In this workshop, Jamshid presented the findings of research of information seeking behaviours of freshmen at McGill University. These students were asked to consider where they would access information from for academic research and how they would evaluate it for credibility.
The results showed that most students relied heavily on Google searches, even for Academic research. and only evaluated the top 5 results. Very few went to the library catalogue, used databases or other structured searches. Their top source of information was their friends.
The conclusion was that students need to be better prepared and must have instruction and practice at using databases and other reputable sources of information. 3 steps before Google seems like such an important part of our programme now.
