Silver+Star+Library

= ‍This is what I was wondering about last week. What do other's think. Thank you Kristie for answering on the other Wikispace which I am going to dump. = = Techonology Question of the Day: = Do you teach how to copy and paste for notetaking with online sources? What are your successes and challenges with that? What level do you think it's developmentally appropriate to introduce to students? I am attempting to teach this to fifth graders in regards to taking notes for social studies. To support the classworom, the classes created a word document with a table: 3 columns and 2 rows for the following: Fact, Question, Response(Thinking).The students were then to use the article from World Book to answer "What was life like in Colonial America?" I modelled how to select 5-7 words for notes, the question and the response. What I noticed was that students have difficulty reading text on a computer screen. It makes me wonder how developmentally appropriate this is thus my questions to you.

Although I have a WIKI, I don't use it so I'm new to how they actually work (embarrassing), so I'm responding in blue to separate my thoughts from the original post. I haven't used notetaking on the computer with students. Mostly I see it as a time issue, but I also wonder how appropriate developmentally it is. You are right about the students having trouble reading from a screen. Actually, I think my comprehension is better when I am reading old school text too. Something about the distractions of the backlight, other stuff on the page, etc. I think it's almost a given that they're going to do it soon anyway, so best to catch them early on, maybe, before bad habits (cutting the whole darn thing?) start. -Kristie

As a Gates Foundation trained teacher, and a 5th grade teacher for 12 years, my experience, training and research has taught me that copy/paste notes are appropriate for elementary aged students. I believe it makes it more meaningful that students have the piece of text in front of them that they are trying to cite when they are writing. It also saves them the time to not have to go back and look it up after they decide if they plan to use a quote, information, etc. directly from the text; not to mention the mistakes they make during the note taking process that leads to erroneous information being included in their work. Students are often overwhelmed by text they encounter while doing research and this forces them to skim/scan the piece of the text and locate exactly what is pertinent to their research/writing, rather than printing an entire piece, or taking notes from an entire piece, when they only want to use a information from one paragraph or a few sentences. As part of this, I also teach them to paraphrase below the copied piece. Here is what a page of notes might look like:

Title of article Link to website Correct citation Copy/paste notes Summary/paraphrase of selection

I hope this helps. -Beth