Working with Information - Finding information in local and online communities

Finding information in local and online communities

Information can come from a wide variety of sources and it is advisable to dispell the myth that all information lies on the Web. Project work allows educators and learners to make use of a wide range of primary resources (resources that provide original accounts of events) in the local community, including interviews with individuals, agencies and organizations, to solve very real problems. Equally valuable are the more traditional resources such as books in school or local libraries, electronic resources such as CD-ROM or online databases. Consult this list as a starting point for alternative resources:

Local community

Online community

Peers at school - for survey and opinion polls or raw data about consumer use, preferences, habits etc.

Elderly people - they may have personally experienced past events in history

The local community generally - for survey and opinion polls or raw data about consumer use, preferences, habits etc.

Individuals in the community may have life experiences, abilities, disabilities or expertise that may prove valuable.

Ask-an-expert sites put your learners in direct contact with experts in their field:

PITSCO's Ask-an-Expert links

Open schools Ask-an-Export links

CIESE Ask-an-expert links

Inter-classroom exchange:

There should always be a meaningful reason behind telecollaborative inter-classroom exchanges.

Teachers.Net Project Center hosts ongoing calls for small-scale inter-classroom collaboration.

Learning Circles are a simple, but effective way of finding collaborative partners online, but your classes must collaborate in return. These are scheduled for certain times of the year.

I*EARN Learning Circles has details about this succesful model.