Sunday, October 4, 2009

Week 5, Thing 12: Rollyo

I do think that a tool like Rollyo helps provide a more contained atmosphere to teach students online searching.  Teachers can control what students find by establishing what resources will be searched, instead of hoping that students know how to separate the good from the bad.  This would work great for research projects or assignments based on choice.  The Rollyo I created includes sources that describe MN's role in the U.S. Civil War.  I was able use my knowledge of the topic and more advanced searching skills to hand pick materials that they can search from.  It was easy to do (although on Safari this was very slow) and I was able to test for user-friendliness.  The searches I tried came up with desirable results.

My only concern here is that it would seem to take a lot of the evaluation out of searching.  Because we have pre-selected the material, students will not have to evaluate the reliability of the source.  They still will have to sift through information and decide which pieces are useful to their assignment, but they will need exposure to and instruction in how to wade through a number of sources and choose the best ones.  So, although I could see this being used with great success, teachers should also pair it with using other online databases and search engines.  I do think that the format of search engine will automatically make students more comfortable with the searching process and more successful if designed correctly.

Below is the link for my Rollyo, MN and the Civil War:
http://rollyo.com/llauer/mn_and_the_civil_war/


1 comment:

Lesley Farmer said...

You really have only two distinct URLs; since you know a lot about the topic, I'd suggest incorporating more URLS