Post #4

For high school students, one of the standards for English Language Arts proficiency according to CPalms is to “Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing and speaking.” (LAFS.1112.L.1.1). One of the online tools I would use with my students is Grammarly. Grammarly edits papers and essays and points out errors in a student’s paper. Grammarly is a free reference software that can be found online. When using it with my students, I would have them use it to check their papers for grammatical and spelling errors, and then have them study why their grammatical errors were corrected so that they can see their mistakes instead of relying on Grammarly to do all of the work for them. Here is the link to Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com/

I believe that the Internet is useful for student research for many reasons. Through the Internet, students can access a variety of information. They can find information much more quickly and will have access to books, magazines, and journals through databases. The Internet may not be helpful when a student finds sources that may not be reliable or up-to-date, but with databases on the Internet, a researcher can find new and accurate information quickly. Many books today contain outdated information, and some students do not have the money to spend on books that they are only using a few times for research, so using the internet is a cheap and quicker alternative.

I have searched for and evaluated Internet resources by critiquing the format of a website, its intended audience, and the resource’s last update. If the format of a website was confusing and/or had nonfunctioning links, I did not use the resource. If the resource’s intended audience was for students younger than me, I did not use it either. The resource’s date was important for me to find because my projects and papers I have done in the past required that a resource was published or written within the past five years. So, if a resource was older than five years, I did not use it. These methods are very similar to the podcast, as the podcast emphasized looking at links thoroughly and making sure that the resource was appropriate for the students.

From the Web Hunt assignment, I learned how to shorten and narrow my searches. I learned that I could find trivia questions or facts by using an asterisk. I also never knew that I could exclude items in a search by using the dash symbol. Overall, the web hunt assignment was very helpful. I can now find search results faster and easier by especially using the asterisk and dash symbols when needed.

Here are some of my own web hunt questions:

1)      Find a website that has information regarding the Spanish-American War.

2)      Find a picture of John Dewey, an American who reformed education during the 19^th and 20^th century.

3)      Find a map that labels all of the oceans on Earth.