Throughout Nueva’s classrooms and on homework assignments, students rely on their web-surfing resourcefulness, growing their abilities to uncover current, trustworthy, and relevant information. School days are no longer spent reading a stack of course textbooks, or relying narrowly on conventional sources. Evenings are no longer spent at the town library, two-finger tap dancing through the card catalog, or fishing through microfiche for facts. With technology providing information at a rapid pace, Nueva students can find information -- or misinformation -- on almost any topic instantaneously. Change is good, but not without its complications.
As Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, points out, “traditional [research] skills assume even greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been screened by librarians and into the more open space of the web” (Jenkins et al, 20). Though the research domains may be different than they were even in the recent past, the instructor’s role is still to train students in critical thinking. Vital Internet research questions expand upon the traditional who, what, where, when, how, and why. How does a student determine if a site is reputable? Who is the author of an online article? Which web suffixes (i.e., .edu, .gov, .com) are most likely to indicate trustworthy sites? What is the context of the piece, and does it serve the student’s purpose?

Students must research the resources prior to inclusion in an academic work product. Similar to the adage “don’t judge a book by its cover,” just because the flashy look or digital polish of an online piece impresses a viewer does not mean that the research is airtight (Jenkins et al, 19). Although printed material is not necessarily accurate, there is a general belief that published materials have been vetted. The dynamic and open nature of the World Wide Web does not imply the same editorial review. With the mass proliferation of blogging, the lines have been blurred further, burdening the researcher. Students must discern trustworthiness, weigh sources against each other, and separate the scholarly wheat from the popular chaff.

Most Nueva Middle School students are adept at gathering a breadth of information with a quick Google.com search. Depth, however, entails more directed follow up after a first look. Deepening research means more than clicking the links from one Wikipedia.org article to another.  To research objectively and accurately, Nueva faculty urge students to consult published works from several sources, both online and printed.

Citations of Internet sources are also of great importance. Many students who might have been overwhelmed by spending several weekends in the library stacks are enabled and empowered by the ease of collecting research from the Internet. Note taking assumes greater importance; with the cut and paste functionality, there is a higher probability that a student would transfer online material verbatim to notes and then carelessly include someone else’s thinking in a work product without proper citation.

Parents and teachers may argue that the challenges facing researchers are timeless. Citation has always been important, and plagiarism has always been a risk. Clearly conveying well-formed, accurately supported opinions is still the aim of analytical writing. If you are using material that is not right, what is the point of an exercise?
In many ways, we are back to basics.

Yet by adding the Internet as a tool, students have a new challenge. To avoid regurgitating misinformation, they must cull carefully through their sources, even those that are perceived as reliable. Students are urged to start with known, reputable sources suggested by Nueva teachers and librarians. Many then choose to branch out and filter through the morass of online choices.

During the Novel Project in the Fall of 2008, for example, the Humanities instructors presented students with a list of well researched sites to begin sparking interest in areas of California History. Students then used other media, visiting Special Collections at the San Francisco Public Library, taking a walking tour in the city, and combing through newspaper articles from the 19th century that are not available online. Once back at school or home, many researchers used online search engines to discover answers to more specific research questions. Just as they would with any materials, students needed to apply discretion as they tapped away at their laptops, scrutinizing authorship, context, and currency. The responsibility fell on teachers, too, to investigate and question students’ sources, and to steer them away from less respectable ones.

The Internet is a great tool with great power, like a bajillion-volume library at your fingertips. Yet the importance of building research skills is ageless. Nueva students today are compelled to find material on topics of interest to them, synthesize new information, document it, and cite it appropriately, then use it to form, communicate, and bolster their opinions. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Works Cited

Jenkins, Henry, Ravi Purushotma, Katherine Clinton, Margaret Weigel, and Alice J. Robison. “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, <www.digitallearning.macfound.org>, 20.