Our classroom was a room of “high school” students that are familiar with Google Docs and copy and paste techniques. One member of our group teaches middle school and we had conversations about how to change/modify for that group. The lesson was composed of three main parts, with the 3rd part having subsections. The first part was an intro to the lesson with reminders of what we had done previously. The second part we brought up a website about the Moon Landing Hoax that looked somewhat professional, and engaged the class in a conversation about whether or not sites that look professional are relevant and trustworthy. The third part engaged the students in sorting given websites in a Google Doc 1.) into relevant categories and then creating an “algorithm” for how to do that then 2.) deciding how to rank the relevance of those websites and creating an algorithm and finally (which we didn’t get to) 3.) ranking the trustworthiness and creating an algorithm.
What went well: We were directed to skip the “scavenger hunt” part which would prep the students on how to search on Google and find relevant sites based on the scavenger hunt, so we introduced a Moon Landing Hoax website to look at to have a class discussion about relevance and trustworthiness.
What didn’t go well: The pacing of the 30 minutes was difficult as the students sorted and viewed the 12 sites (down from the original 19 sites) and then creating an algorithm. The students needed more time to create and process the algorithm which we couldn’t give as we were attempting to get through all the sites.
Changes: We put everything online because we wanted to avoid the students struggling to write down the long URL’s of each website on the physical paper. We also cut down the original 19 sites, and thought about which sites might be distracting to students (i.e. “The Onion”) so that students were quickly grabbing and sorting for the first section of the 3rd part. This was a choice we made because of the “high school” students we had and time allowed - if had longer we might write the URL’s down so students aren’t getting confused between all the different sites and/or open tabs.
Formative assessment: just having the worksheet shared with us to review what the student accomplished and the thought process for their algorithms - right or “wrong”.
Just an FYI - WARNING - if you do the Search Engine Design - DO NOT use the Top News: Questionable link - http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/
It is a fake site - however, the main story today is about a teacher getting fired for showing students how to perform some sex ed topics.
I appreciate the warning in the lesson notes to check the sites. This topic could be very controversial to show on the LCD projector with any age of students,
Thanks, Nicole. We’re looking at which links to include as part of our Unit 2 revisions, and we’ll take this into account, too. I’m glad the warning helped. It’s really difficult to send kids to the web because it changes after we include the link, so thanks for the heads up.