Yes, Students, there's a world beyond Wikipedia
by: Karen All Culotta
For parents with fond memories of the Dewey Decimal System, library card catalogs and thumbing through their family's World Book Encyclopedia, it can come as a shock to discover that their own children's research habits often begin and end with a quick click on Wikipedia.
Heather Moorefield-Lang, the education and social-sciences librarian at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., and a former middle school librarian, is aware of the frustration both parents and educators experience when students limit their research efforts to Google and Wikipedia, when a wealth of online tools are at their fingertips, many free of charge.
"We all struggle to find the best tools to find information, and to present information," said Moorefield-Lang, a member of the American Association of School Librarians' task force assigned to study the best educational Web sites for kindergarten through 12th grade. The group has posted this year's Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning on the American Library Association's site (ala.org).
With roughly 100 nominations, the task force selected the winners based on credibility, ease of use, interactivity and affordability. They run the gamut from content resources, such as the National Archives Digital Classroom (archives.gov/education/index.html), to curriculum-sharing sites like the Jason Project (jason.org/public/whatis/start.aspx), National Science Digital Library (nsdl.org) and Exploratree (exploratree.org.uk).
"We know that in these economic times, families and schools don't have extra money to spend, so we prefer if the sites offer their content for free," said Moorefield-Lang, who offers snapshots of her favorite sites:.
Kindergarten – fifth grade
Professor Garfield (professorgarfield.org): "(It) is lots of fun, and great for writing stories, comic strips, and even for math and science projects."
International Children's Digital Library (en.childrenslibrary.org): "A wonderful tool, with 3,400 books, in 54 different languages."
Middle and high school
Museum Box (museumbox.e2bn.org): "I'm very fond of this Web site, which allows students to chat, and to create virtual 'boxes' that they can fill with text or video clips."
Live Binders (livebinders.com): "Virtual binders where you can store Web pages. It's really slick."
Prezi (prezi.com): "I love this Web site, which is like PowerPoint kicked up a notch. A really nifty presentation tool."
Debategraph (debategraph.org): "This Web site is a virtual graphic organizer, where students can collaborate and organize their debates and presentations."
Scratch (scratch.mit.edu): "This Web site is great for students between the ages of 8 and 16, and offers a multimedia tool to design graphics with sound to create a video game."
from: Chicago Tribune
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