Research Can Be Fun, Too!

My students started a research paper this past week. In asking other teachers in the building, I have found out that this is the fourth year in a row they write a research paper. Well, gee, no wonder they're less than enthralled with the current event topics I let them choose from. Here I expected "oohs" and "aaahs" as I passed out the assignment sheet with "CHOOSE ONE FROM THESE SIX" at the top. Nope? No big deal to them? I supposed they are so used to doing research that they don't bat an eye at being asked to research high-interest topics such as the legalization of marijuana and the interest of marriage equality. I certainly didn't research these topics back in the 90s...but alas, times have changed.

And...so has the method of research. I know we've discussed the innate difference between OUR high school research versus THEIR high school research, but it still has shock value for me. We definitely could not, under any circumstances, "google" anything for our research papers. In fact, the online research we could complete was all intranet-based and through the school's network, if there really even was such a thing back then (saying "back then" is really funny because I understand that graduating high school in 2000 isn't even that long ago, but in terms of technology, it's light years).

Which leads me to my incorporation of EbscoHost to my 98 seniors who would much rather just plunk their topic into the google search box. Boy, were they anti-EbscoHost! And let me preface this by saying, I used to be anti this as well. I thought it was too "boring" I guess. But I let them figure out the importance of it firsthand when most of their sites regarding these hot-current-event-topics were blocked from the school's network. Ha! It's all I could do at this point (in each and every of my four class periods) from singing "I toldjya so!" But in all sincerity, it was kind of cool to watch them learn how to search for scholarly pieces of information instead of just some radical's blog posting about how Obamacare shouldn't happen, or whatever. It just kind of happened that they found out that plain old googling wasn't going to cut it. I think part of the importance of finding quality resources also came from the required annotated bibliography (oh, did I not mention that before? I guess that's pretty vital to in-depth research, eh?). I complained and complained every single time I had to do an annotated bib, but boy, they really start to see the effectiveness of their research once they are forced to quantify it.

Oh, and thanks for the tip, everyone during the first few weeks of class-- www.easybib.com works like a dream and makes them hate citations SO much less!

So here we go...research paper outlines start tomorrow, so we'll see how much information they could gather. And if not, I'll direct them toward those ancient pages between hard covers that are full of words and useful information. You know...books.