I'm Sure You've All Asked Yourself This Question

Link to August 28 Internet Evolution post, "Do Kids Have the Right Internet Skills?"

Excerpt:

"The majority of students, middle schoolers on up through college, will start and end with Google in their search,” said Jim Teicher, CEO of Cybermart Education. “Even then, their understanding of how their selection of keywords can impact the quality of their search results is horribly weak, not to mention the fact that they don't realize that Google does not include many of the fee-based quality research databases. But then, relatively few adults realize this either.”

Important skills for Internet searches include:

• Effectively developing the right search questions and topics
• Being able to locate information
• Critically evaluating the usefulness of information
• Synthesizing information to answer questions, and
• Communicating results to others.

“Internet skills are like any concept which necessitates student instruction,” said Susan Brooks, co-founder of Internet4classrooms. "Since these skills are not tested by many states, other areas of instruction that are tested get class-time priority. Because of this issue, many students may not have had direct instruction on how to perform research, and their skills reflect this.”