How Do We Help Our Students Gather Information Using Digital Resources?

I think before students are given the opportunity to use digital media to gather information for reports etc. A lot of time should be spent front loading the activity with the skills students will need. Nobody owns the information on the web, it is public domain and most authors are no even mentioned. Therefre skills such as the ability to discern what sites would be appropriate and reliable is very important as well, vocabulary students might come across needs to be taught, and how to pick out main ideas or key words from the passages needs to be taught. Once students have a strong foundation, the next step should be for the teacher to decide what is it she/he wants the students to learn and what digital resources would effectively support the outcome and just as importantly, what digital resources are available to the teacher to use. The older the student the lesson ownership the teacher needs to take for laying out sites to visit and types of information to gather. However, regardless, the teacher will need to have clearly laid out expectations and information for students to access. Things to plan for are: predetermined sites to be used, paragraphs tagged, graphic organizers, adaptations in place for struggling students and what is going to be the final project for assessment.