Online Research

 There many things that my students have to research about and the main place we do this is the internet. I know from my own research how time consuming it is to find information that is both relevant and useful. Some websites have a bit of what information you are looking for and not all of it so you have to dot about through a selection of sites. I also find the language that is used on websites when you do find them is not always the easiest to understand what they talking about. To help my students while they are doing their research, I have been putting links onto our class website as helpful starting points to save them some time.

Examples here - Year 11 Designers - Year 12 Design Era Hexagons - Materials Research

A website that I use with my students a lot and that I rate very highly is Technology Student.Com. The content on this website is great and written in a way that is easy for students to understand. It is better to get information about types of hardwood, for example, from this website than a website that specialises in wood, as the language used is much more technical on the specialist website that is not relevant or understandable for the use it is needed for in a student project. Also, doing this kind of research is not the main focus of a project and I find that the student s are turned off really quickly if they are finding the research hard or they are not able to understand what they are finding. Copy and paste happens and no understanding is going on.

As much as I love the Technology Student website for its content, I absolutely hate the layout and the navigation. I don't bother going on the main site and searching for something. I normally do a Google search along the lines of "types of softwood technology student" as I know that this will point me to where I need to be.

This year, I have started doing research for my Year 11 Visual Art students too and I find this even harder as the language that is used to talk about artworks and artists is at a much harder / higher level than is easily understood or is needed.

My blogpost about reading about Henri Rousseau.

Marc Milford's blogpost about this same exercise, as he helped me put it together.

With all of this in mind, I have decided his year to start to put together my own website of "stuff" based on the research that I do to find information for the students. What I have got on this website at the time of writing this blogpost is not a lot. I have mainly focussed on starting on materials as that is what my students are needing at this time, but it is a job that will be ongoing and I will plod along with it into the future. I am not expecting this to be a quick thing to put together at all and will work on things that my students are needing at any given time so that it slowly builds up to be something that is useful over time.

Link to website - its hasn't even got a front page yet!!

Link to materials page

Link to wood page

Student Voice on Literacy

 I have asked my Year 11 Design and Visual Communication and Year 11 Visual Art classes the following questions about the literacy work that we have been doing this year so far.

Design and Visual Communication

Could you please explain why you put the answer to the last question.

( How easy do you think it is to find the research information on the internet?)

6 responses

I find it a bit difficult to understand information.

Because it gives a clear understanding of what the context of the task is.

I decided to rate the question a 3 out of 6 because most of the time the information your researching is a topic you've never heard about or don't know anything about it. But other then that I think its pretty easy to research information on the internet.

It's easy, but often the information isn't exactly what I need, can be overwhelming, or isn't reliable.

I think it's a bit hard to frind important online because it doesn't show me the right type of answer that I want.

Its easy to find the research information but sometimes its quite hard

What reading methods do your teachers use in other classes that you think would be useful to use in DVC?6 responses

Don't know

Video clips

I honestly don't know if there's any difference I really don't mind.

None

Help often around us students

Nothing

Visual Art

Could you please explain why you put the answer to the last question.

( How easy do you think it is to find the research information on the internet?)

6 responses

Because information is widely accessible, search engines quickly provide relevant results and digital tools offer resources like academic papers, articles and databases instantly

Sometimes I understand some information, sometimes I don't understand some things that i find and also because theres no information.

Because of the task we are given, it becomes easy for me to incorporate some references into a project

There are some things that we look up and it’s not the right meaning or images.

It is not quite hard to find important online because if you put into google specifically what you want to search and it will pop up.

It’s kind a hard, but if you really know what to look for you can get it easily.

What reading methods do your teachers use in other classes that you think would be useful to use in Art?6 responses

Active reading: what I mean is like engaging with the text by taking notes, asking questions and summarising as you go

Helping student a bit more often.

Video clips

None

Be more active around the students

The resheach, becouse It can help me to use it in my art activities easier.