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June 1, 2003
Creating a Student Research Portal
By Kathe Santillo
As the Internet continues to grow, so does its inclusion in education. To teachers, this can be less than advantageous if it requires more time and training to incorporate these valuable resources into classroom lessons and units. And launching a room full of fifth graders onto the Net to search independently for curriculum related resources often is more counter-productive than productive.
One way to eliminate off-task searching is to develop a research portal for your students to use when working online. A research portal organizes pre-selected Web sites for student use. Using pre-selected sources eliminates the need for students to aimlessly search the Net and provides them with quality, useful sites. This makes it possible for students to spend their time on learning how to use information rather than solely on finding it.
Traditionally, research portals are created as a Web page using html editing software, such as Microsoft Front Page or Netscape Composer, or by composing in straight html. Both of these tasks are time consuming and require some level of training and preparation by the teacher. Even though I created a Web site for my elementary libraries, I was frustrated with the amount of work it took just to add new links when I located new educational sites or to remove dead links from the page. If you're not familiar with the process of editing a Web site, each time a change is made, no matter how small the change is, the altered Web page file must be uploaded to the Web server to replace the old one. Although it's not a difficult task, it can be time-consuming.
If you're not thrilled with the idea of creating a research portal Web page, but have been searching for a way to provide your students with pre-selected, quality online sources that are organized and easily accessed, you can create a research portal using Backflip, which makes it possible to create a research portal for student use without the hassles of creating a Web page. And if you already have a Web page, Backflip can be incorporated into your existing page to eliminate time-consuming updates and changes to your site.
What is Backflip? It is a free, Web-based tool that lets you save and organize Web sites you find on the Internet. It works like Bookmarks (Netscape) or Favorites (Explorer) but the selected sites are stored on the Backflip Internet server, not on the computer's hard drive. A site can be saved or "Backflipped" from any computer with Internet access. It doesn't matter if a search turns up a site while searching from home, school, work, or even a laptop while traveling. Every saved site goes to one location instead of two or three hard drives in different geographical locations. Once you've signed up as a member you can save sites, which can be labeled, accessed, and organized into folders and sub-folders. The folders can be made public so that others can share the resources, or they can remain private for your use only. Only Backflip members can access private folders from the above URL, but public folders are available to anyone through a public URL address designated to your Backflip account. The folders, sub-folders, and other information accessed from the public site cannot be manipulated by visitors, since all editing and modification of folders and sub-folders is done when a member signs on to the private account URL.
One way to create a Backflip research portal is to set up subject or database specific folders on the Backflip Web site. As a school library media specialist, I created folders and sub-folders for all of the major units of study across several grade levels, but a Backflip research portal can be tailored to meet the needs of an individual classroom or grade level. Using Backflip, I created thematic public folders for curriculum lessons and units taught in 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms. I labeled the main folders by grade level and curriculum area, such as, "Sixth Grade Social Studies", "Sixth Grade Science", "Fifth Grade Social Studies", etc. Within each folder, I created sub-folders labeled with the name of each major unit of study in that curriculum area. For example, the sixth grade social studies curriculum includes units on Ancient Civilizations, The Middle Ages, and World War I & II, so the sixth grade social studies Backflip folder contains sub-folders with these labels. Each folder contains Web sites related to the sub-folder topic, which I reviewed and selected as quality sources for student use. The title of each Backflipped Web site in the sub-folders appears as hyper-linked text so that students can navigate to the site with a simple click. Backflip also provides an area where a short written description of the Web site contents can be entered for additional student guidance.
The same method I used to create my library Backflip folders could be used for a classroom research portal. Folders could be created and organized by the type of online resources you want to provide for your students. But be careful. It's easy to go a little "Backflip crazy" and start adding every site that catches your eye. The most important step for setting up a research portal is the evaluation of the resources selected for the Backflip folders. When selecting sites for student use, you should have a written checklist of criteria that each site must meet. Your evaluative criteria should include:
- Author of the Web page — Who is responsible for the information found on the site? What are his or her credentials? Is he or she an expert in the field? Is the author's name available on the site?
- Bias — Does the person or organization presenting the information have an ulterior motive? Who is responsible for the information? Does the information presented appear to have a slanted viewpoint?
- Credibility — Is the site a personal Web page? A school district Web page? A university Web page? Is bibliographic information given? Are there spelling or grammatical errors?
- Currency — How old is the information presented on the site? Is there a copyright or "date last modified" date? Does the Web page provide information such as statistics or other time sensitive data?
- Reading Level — Is the information presented written at reading and comprehension levels suitable to your students?
- Domain Names and URLs — The choice to include a Web site should not be entirely based on the domain name, but it can tell something about the site. Domain names .org and .com may represent an organization whose viewpoint on a particular subject might be biased, such as a tobacco company, or a commercial company with a marketing angle. The domain name .edu might be a scholarly project from a university or a Web page created by a third grade student. A URL that contains the name of a public Web server like geocities or angelfire may need a little more scrutiny. Remember that anyone can create a Web page and post to these servers. There are no editors or fact-checkers on the Internet.
Creating an account with Backflip is very simple. Once the account is set up, you can Backflip any site by using the Backflip button, which can be dragged to the toolbar of your browser. The Backflip button is found by clicking on the "get tools" link in the navigation bar at the bottom of the Backflip home page. To date, the Backflip button icon can only be added to Netscape and Internet Explorer browser software. If you use AOL or another browser, you can get around this by downloading the free browser software online for Netscape or Explorer. To set up the Backflip button, minimize AOL, open the downloaded browser, and drag the button to the browser toolbar. The Backflip button lets you add any page you are viewing to your Backflip folders with one click. You just select which folder or sub-folder you want to add it to, enter a brief description of the site, and click. This feature is very beneficial for those times when you accidentally stumble on a great site on the Web during a non-related search.
If you already have a classroom Web page, you can link your Backflip resources to a page on your site. I created and added a "classroom lesson resources" page to my Meridian Elementary School Library Home Page and Broad Street Elementary School Library Home Page, which links my students to my Backflip public folders. This lets me add new sites or remove dead links from my research folders without uploading an altered Web page to the server every time a change is made.
The way you create your research portal can be as individual as the needs of your students. You may choose to consistently provide the same resources or to set up thematic folders as needed for classroom instruction. If a folder is no longer needed for instruction, there's no need to remove it. Simply changing the folder from public to private keeps the collection of sites available to you, but not to visitors to your public folder site. This lets you continuously update, evaluate, and monitor the collection of resources for the next time the folder is needed.
Creating a research portal using an organization tool like Backflip keeps resources dynamic. A basic Web page cannot provide this without countless hours of editing and management to keep the resources current and relevant to instruction.
Saving time and providing students with tools for learning are worth a Backflip, don't you think?
Email: Kathe Santillo
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