Identify best practices for using ISearch in the classroom.
In the following exercise, you will help students learn how to search for information on a topic to find a variety of resources using ISearch. Before you begin this exercise, review INFOhio's GO! Ask, Act, Achieve (for elementary through high school students) and Research 4 Success (for high school and college students) to determine whether you will use these tools to walk students through the research process.
Tell students ISearch is a great place to look for a variety of resources when they have a research assignment because it's full of resources the library purchases and recommends.
Show students how to find ISearch on the INFOhio website or on your school library website. Remind students to log into the INFOhio website with your school's INFOhio username and password. If you are at school, INFOhio may log you in automatically.
Demonstrate a search using a few, precise keywords to show students how they can use ISearch to find books in your library and articles from INFOhio. In this example, we'll use a search for polar bears.
Point out the tabs at the top, letting students know they can find items from your library on the My Library tab, encyclopedia articles on the Encyclopedias tab, magazine and newspaper articles on the Basic Sources tab, and scholarly research articles that are more advanced on the Advanced Sources tab. Let students know if their topics are related to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, or math), they should check the STEAM tab. If they want to find government documents and other freely available resources, they could check the Open Access tab. Tell students it's a good idea to start with the the My Library tab.
Let students know if there isn't anything on their topic in your school library or if their search is too narrow, they might land on the Encyclopedias tab.
Point out where they can find the call number (1) and availability (2).
Click a book cover to show students they can find more information about that book including information they can use to cite the book.
Discuss the limiters that appear in the left column of the My Library tab, and let students know they can find limiters like those on every tab of results.
Point out the subject terms. Tell students they can use the subjects to come up with new search terms to try. Encourage them to brainstorm closely related terms, broader concepts, and narrower terms. Point out the term "Arctic" that you see under the Subject limiter. Ask students if they know what the Arctic is. (If you need a refresher, read the full text of this article in World Book Kids.) Ask students why they might think of this as a broader term. Ask students what phrase they could use that would be broader than polar bears but might give them results on polar bears. [Hint: Arctic animals]
Discuss any other limiters students will find useful.
Explore the results on one of the other tabs. Demonstrate how to access the full text of any article from INFOhio using the View/Download button.
From the EBSCO Detailed Record page, show students how to save items. Remind students they cannot use the URL in the browser address bar to get back to that item. Instead, they need to click the Permalink button and copy the URL from the Permalink box that appears. Point out the citation tools. Demonstrate how to get to the digital version of the full text.
Show students how to find items they found on the My Library tab on the shelves in your school library.
Remind students when they are looking for information on a topic, they will probably need to try more than one search.
Failing forward
Read the article If You Have to Fail—And You Do—Fail Forward. "Failing forward" involves learning from mistakes or errors to achieve success. One way to help students fail forward and develop grit is to provide them with opportunities in safe spaces to make, identify, correct, and learn from mistakes. Complete these steps to give students a positive example for how they can learn from mistakes to achieve success.
Remind students of that word Arctic. Demonstrate a search for artic (spelling Arctic incorrectly on purpose).
You will land on the My Library tab, but you will have very few results.
Explore the results on the other tabs. There will not be many and most will be unrelated. Tell students, "Whoops, that didn't work very well, did it? There should be more resources on the Arctic than this. What's wrong? What should I try?" Let students provide suggestions or try to help you find the error.
Try a new search for Arctic (spelled correctly this time).
Explore the results on all the tabs. Ask students if these results seem better.
Remind students when they are looking for information on a topic, they need to try more than one search and they can ask you for help. Sometimes they may not get good results because of a spelling error or sometimes they may not get good results because their search terms are too broad or too narrow. They should try different searches, looking at the subject terms for ideas, to get the results with the information they need.
For more information, including ideas for integrating ISearch into classroom instruction, talk to your school librarian.
What part of the search process do you think will be most difficult for students?
What part of the search process is most intuitive for students?
Can you think of time when you anticipated that students would find a new task difficult but were surprised when it seemed intuitive or came easily to many students?
Can you think of a time when you have made, identified, corrected, and learned from a mistake? How did you feel when you made it through that process?
