He also claimed that among the students who do depend on search engines for research, many do not know how to use the results.
'Typically, students will click on the first listing at the top of the results page and take a quick look, then continue down the list without studying the source of the website to figure out whether it’s the best source of information,' he said.
'Often they pass right by the website they should be looking at because it doesn’t look like the website they have in their mind.
'The challenge is we’re not preparing kids in the classroom for these new online reading skills. If kids are largely going to use the Internet now and in the future, these skills for online comprehension must be included in what teachers teach.'
The study also found that students shun search engines in favour of typing what they think is the right site directly into the address bar, such as Georgewashington.com.
Mr Leu said: 'When they did use a search engine, they skipped right over legitimate pages because it didn’t look like what they had in mind.
'That’s what children do with their rock stars and their other cultural stars. They are accustomed to typing in the name and adding .com. That often doesn’t work for real academic research.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352929/Endangered-tree-octopus-proves-students-believe-read-Internet.html#ixzz4KD5LnD9Q
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