CEDO 520 - week 2

This week was mostly spent on Internet Search strategies and techniques and looking at ways to evaluate online resources.  I liked playing around with the Noodle Tools website which enables you to focus your search a little bit by providing search tools that match up with your informational needs.  It also provided a nice tool for citing sources in both APA and MLA styles.  It is hard to find a resource that offers both styles...for free.  Another interesting thing that we explored was Google Alerts.  I really liked the idea of getting one central email containing multiple links to the topic of my choice instead of having to check a few sources each day or subscribe to several feeds.  I could see using Alerts for current news on interesting topics or for something that changes often like Interest Rates on home loans.  Wikipedia became one of the topics when evaluating resources and the opinions on its validity as a source are as varied as you can get.  Some educators say it is never to be used, some say that its a good starting point, and some say that an entry can be reliable with proper editing and citing of sources.  In other words the verdict is still out.  Perhaps the most useful tool that we stumbled upon this week was Google Forms.  We created forms for evaluating internet resources and I found it to be extremely easy.  The options were great and the output generated simply migrated to a Google Doc spreadsheet.  They even allow branching of multiple forms, which was great.  I plan on using them for teachers and staff but I also would like to use them with the students.  Add that to my ever-growing list of "things to incorporate this coming school year".  haha