Middle+School+Library

toc =﻿= =What is Digital Literacy?=



Paul Glister(1997), in his book, Digital Literacy, defines the term as, "the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers".

=﻿How will I start my research?=

If you are not sure where to start with your searching, then do a Google Wonderwheel to create a mindmap that will direct your research.



=Good search engines= Search engines can give you lots of information from a variety of sources. These sources tend to be more reliable that Google and the language is more suited to a school student. The resources are also interactive and can be used in the presentation of your work.





=﻿Communicating your ideas=

If you are looking for something more impressive than Powerpoint you could try Prezi. There is a tutorial about how to start one. You should sign up with your school email and password. You could also try Animoto which is a great tool that analyses your photos, video clips and music to generate a video similar to a trailer. Glogster is an interactive poster: GLOG is short for graphical bog. It looks like a poster but readers can interact with the content.





=﻿Pictures that are free to use=

If you are looking for pictures to use, there are two great public domain image sites which will help you collect images for your research.





=﻿How to know if a website is good=


 * Using the Web well takes more than just knowing how to google ****. To use the Web wisely and efficiently, you should consider the following six suggestions when examining Web pages: **
 * 1) **Make sure you are in the right place **
 * 2) **When in doubt, doubt[[image:tree_octopus.JPG width="400" height="88" align="right" link="http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/"]] **
 * 3) **Consider the source **
 * 4) **Know what's happening **
 * 5) **Look at details **
 * 6) **Distinguish web pages **** from pages found on the Web. **
 * Remember the case of the Northwest Pacific Tree Octopus which was a big hoax! You can have another look at this hoax website by clicking ** [|here]

=The Five W's of Web Site Evaluation=

W**HO **

Who wrote the pages and are they an expert? Is a biography of the author included? How can I find out more about the author?

W**HAT ** What does the author say is the purpose of the site? What else might the author have in mind for the site? What makes the site easy to use? What information is included and does this information differ from other sites?

W**HEN **

When was the site created? When was the site last updated?

W**HERE ** Where does the information come from? Where can I look to find out more about the sponsor of the site?

W**HY **

Why is this information useful for my purpose? Why should I use this information? Why is this page better than another?

©2001-2009. Kathy Schrock.

=﻿Do you need to use a dictionary?=

Online dictionaries can give you not just definitions but pronunciations, parts of speech, word origins and synonyms of words.

Both of these sites will give help you! Websters will also give you a translation into another language. Just click on the icon.