When asking students to research online, you should help guide them to appropriate sources either by providing the sources, using an academic based search engine, or training them to recognize a reputable source.
1. Providing Sources
When choosing sources for your students, aside from vetting a site for factual presentation and bias, you should attempt to choose a source with limited ads and other distractions. Using reputable websites and news organizations is preferable to sites whose pages are cluttered with ads and hyperlinks. These ads serve to draw students' attention away from the material they should be reading and often are targeted to each students' online browsing history.
If a site requires a log-in, email helpdesk@indianmountain.org, so we can ensure that our students' privacy is protected.
2. Academic Based Search Engines
The school subscribes to a service, ProQuest, that will search exclusively from academic journals and reputable sources. Students and faculty have access to this service only when they are on-campus and connected to UC-WiFi. It features a search platform without ads or other distractions, although search results might be too advanced for some of our younger students.
Sweetsearch claims curation from education professionals. It allows you to target results from "news" sources or "history" sources in addition to a general search. The results are more focused than what you might find in a Google search and the Sweetsearch site itself is devoid of distracting ads.
3. Recognizing Reputable Sources
Training students to recognize bias vs. fact in online articles is an important skill. Many institutions have built tools and curricula to address this topic. Here are a few that might be easy to incorporate into a lesson before assigning online research.
https://cor.stanford.edu/ - Stamford's Civic Online Reasoning resources and curriculum. These tackle real issues in interactive, compelling ways.
https://sites.google.com/site/tiponlinethinkaloudlessons/ : History based lessons for critical online research. You may have to adapt these to current Google search results.
http://www.kathleenamorris.com/2019/02/26/research-lessons/ - This site offers 50 mini-lessons to help students improve and develop online research skills.
http://factitious-pandemic.augamestudio.com/#/ - This is a great place to test your own or your students' ability to recognize bias and false information in news articles. It provides a helpful guide before you begin and scores results in a game-like format.
https://13-dot-pohtimiskaavio-demo.appspot.com/#edit - This form is the result of a group of academics seeking to encourage students to research controversial issues as a means of developing an informed and deep understanding. The form can be saved to one's own computer and can provide a basis for note taking from online sources.
https://www.middleweb.com/46153/help-students-become-adept-media-evaluators/ - This blog entry gives strategies, insight, and advice for talking with students about media targeting and bias.