American Mothers, Inc.

By: Krista Brick

I have gone to school. As a matter of fact I have even gone to college. I used the Dewey Decimal system, I did the shadow box project and I learned how to annotate a bibliography.

I see the value in a good research project. We learned how to: create a project subject, find research materials on that subject, use the information in that resource to extract pertinent data for our project, and document where that information came from in creating our final report.

That is not how things go now in my experience.

Now, granted I have only from kindergarten to sixth grade modern day classroom work to draw from. However, school research projects seem to be more based on how well you perform a Google search and how much your parents are willing to fork over at Michael’s Craft Store.

My fourth-grader came home with a project to make a collage of photos from the Civil War. She plugged into a Google search “Photos from 1861 to 1865” and hit print. One printer cartridge later and she was ready to glue. Hmmm, perhaps she did see a bit about our nation’s history glancing at the pictures as she used puffy paint to decorate the page. But, I can tell you what she did not do is use a ton of researching skills to find out what life looked like during the Civil War.

My sixth-grader opted to create a model of a Roman temple for her Social Studies class. Again, she hit the Google and found one she liked, printed out a picture and headed to Michael’s Craft Store for some balsa wood, cardboard paper, gold spray paint and a hot glue gun. Did she learn about the methods it took the Romans to build the temple or the materials they used? No. But, she did learn that with just a few words in the Google search and a click she could come up with the photo she needed to complete the project.

Let’s call a spade a spade and rename some of these projects. I see the value in a class that helps these students use the new resources available to them to access information more far-reaching than your traditional library shelves. I get that. I believe a class in learning how to access information via the Internet is a tool that serves them far more greatly than pulling physical books off the shelf. Learning how to narrow down your search so you can find the best information available quite literally in the entire world is a skill. Learning to take that information and use it in a project without plagiarizing is yet another skill. Learning what is factual on the Internet and what is an unreliable source—yet another modern day researching tools.

Creating projects for kids who have access to the Internet can provide these students with invaluable researching tools. School projects are heavy on the glue and light on the learning seems to be more busy work for the parents and quite frankly expensive.