2.1.1 Collecting Reputable Digital Resources

Completing the walkabout gave me a perspective of a student. It easy to get frustrated when numerous .com less reputable sources always show their faces first! Looking into the .gov and .edu type resources are truly valuable in social studies.

Three valuable sites that I love from my walkabout are:

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/  The living room candidate is an amazing addition to a government course. It has a huge variety of campaign commercials for presidential elections from 1952-2012. I love showing my students how the tone of the commercials has truly changed over time.

 http://www.glogster.com/  I love the aspect of glogster for presentations. As a virtual school it will allow students to have an interactive way to present the information they are learning about.

http://www.symbaloo.com/ This is an amazing took to keep track of all the great resources we find!


Students can be taught about safety of their research to help maximize their learning by providing them with guidelines. Giving students free reign of the internet may lead them into directions that is not best for research. A good procedure would be providing them with a list of great resources that they can choose to browse from and complete their research. This would allow them a launching point.  Allowing students to compare reputable resources with reputable sources would allow them to see the value of a good website.

An example would be if the student has to write a research paper on a current piece of legislation and write a speech on whether it should be passed or not. We could provide them a variety of websites to help research current pieces of legislation, but ultimately they could pick the topic that they found most interesting. That way it hones in what they are looking for and teaches them about more reputable sources.