It seems to be stating the obvious to say that the Internet has transformed society. If it's not obvious, it should be. All manner of modern communications are only possible because of the connectivity the World Wide Web brings to bear. The aspect of communication we will be dealing with here relates to the information that has become available in huge quantities.

     Doing research on the Internet calls for some serious critical thinking. Unlike peer-reviewed journals, anyone can post anything on the Web or distribute it via e-mail and find millions of people who will believe it. Your students need to know how to discern valid, credible information from the huge amount of pure garbage they find. Proper and effective use of the Internet for research calls for a lot of preparation by you.

      There are a couple of ways to approach having your students do Internet research. First, you can identity in advance the specific sites that contain the information they will need. This works better for younger students. This method also means that you must do the research yourself before assigning the project, then provide the specific links to the learners. There are web sites that provide prescreened research resources, like the KidsConnect Toolbox from the American Association of School Librarians and KidsClick, also put together by librarians. Yahoo!, a popular search engine and web portal, offers an alternate version for children called Yahoo! Kids. This site also has a lot of games and other distractions, but it does offer age-appropriate searches.

     The second method for undertaking student research is to allow them to research freely. You should still have some idea of where they are most likely to find data and make sure they stay on task. Monitoring your students is of primary importance with either method - the temptations of the Internet are too strong to expect the students to police themselves. Any school computer should be equipped with filtering software, although care must be taken to ensure that legitimate information is not also filtered. Aside from access to entirely inappropriate content like pornography, unsupervised Internet access is likely to also result in visits to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. In addition to your personal monitoring, limiting the amount of time spent online can also limit surfing time. If they only have 20 minutes at a time to find what they need, they are more likely to stay on task. Remember that YOU are responsible for what goes on when the students are under your supervision.

     So your students have begun their research. As I've said so often, they need to be able to distinguish between valid, credible information and that which is, well, garbage. Let's assume you have had some discussion with the students regarding the validity of information. That done, you can deal with the issue during the research by validating research sources as they go. For example, you may want to have them submit interim reports of some kind during the process, such as a list or example of the sources they have found. You do need to be ready to do some work here in checking out those sources.

     You can also deal with the validity of sources after the fact by defining the requirement for valid sources in your rubric (you DO have a rubric for the assignment, right?), and grading the finished product against the rubric. Personally, I like the first method for younger students, with increasing responsibility put on the students as they mature. They should be able to be completely responsible for their work no later than 11th grade. And Wikipedia is never a good primary source, regardless of grade level.