The series of ariticles that we read for searching the web were intriguing in a couple of ways. First, the amount of information available on the web is imense. Search strategies and skills are essential for efficiet use of the web. If someone is not skilled at searching they will waste countlless hours and likely be discuouraged from using the web as resource. The basic skills mentionin the Step Zero and Four Nets are simple ways that people can be taught to improve thier searching skills. The methods in the articles are simple and easy to remember.
Second, searching the web is a much more complex process than many of us think. Our brain does multiple complex tasks as we search the web and decide which site to go to and what information to use. Many people now do these tasks instictually, but the is much cognitive work going on even if we do not realize it. The Henry Study does a great job of drawing attention to the fundamenal skills, reading and writing, and more importantly, the higher order thinking skills, such as evaluating and formulating questions, that take place during web searches. The researcherargues that some of these skills are unique to web searching. I beleive that while the context is unique to web searching, the skills that are used are similar to thosed used by more advanced researchers. As we were going thorugj school the average research report had maybe 3 or 4 sources if we were lucky. This is not much informaiton to evaluate and synthesize. Using the web you can have a myriad of sources and that brings all of the challenges (and opportunities) that a multitude of sources brings. It is a great opportunity to teach and apply higher order thinking skills!
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As expressed within my article, search strategies are vital to not only finding what you need, but finding it efficiently. It's nice to see that this author gave credit to higher order thinking skills necessary for the task of searching. This is where I think many of our students have it all wrong. .. they think they are experts just from their ability to "surf".
To piggy-back on what Amy said, our tech-savvy students already have some of the basic skills for "surfing the web" that we can leverage to teach the higher level skills of advanced searching and thinking critically about the information they find. These are skills that should be promoted throughout their entire school career in order to learn the technology skills that align with their developmental stages.
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