Internet Research.

Objectives:

1. The student will be able to narrow down the sites he/she looks at when doing internet research
2. The student will become aware of the different points of view that websites are created from

Materials Needed:

• Computers connected to the Internet
• notebook

Activity:

In this activity, students will take topics that relate to the “Our Rivers” section and do further investigation on the internet.

Internet Research Tips

A few things should be discussed with students ahead of time that will make the internet research experience more pleasant:

• narrow down your search. A simple “trick” can make life a lot easier. When typing in whatever you are searching for, make sure you use quotation marks. For example “Mica Dam”. This will result in sites appearing that have both words in their description. If you type in Mica Dam without quotations, any site that contains either dam or mica in its description will appear. For some topics this could result in thousands of sites of which the large majority are useless to you.
• If you are researching an animal, type in its scientific name. For example trout is “Oncorhynchus Mykiss”. This will bring you direct information on trout. If you type in trout, you will get every resort, guide, and tackle shop website in existence! Scientific names are found in dictionaries and encyclopedias.
• many of the sites they will access have been created by special interest groups and push a certain point of view. For instance with dams, you’ll have websites from the environmental, industry and fisheries points of view. The students should visit several sites to get a bigger picture of a topic

Topics

Below is a “starter” list of topics that are of a British Columbia interest. How local or international you go depends on teacher preference.

• Do a report on a specific river. For B.C. some possibilities are: Fraser River, Thompson River, Nechako River, and Stuart River
  
  
• Do a report on a specific dam. Dams that affect B.C. are the Revelstoke Dam, Mica dam, W.A.C. Bennett Dam and the Columbia River dam.

Other possible topics are:

• Hydro Power (the technical aspects of how a dam leads to the production of electricity, how the electricity is distributed, etc.)
• Dams and fish (how fish are affected, what attempts have been made to address the problem)
• Floods/floodplains
• Acid rain
• Water fowl
• Pollution from industry
• Riparian vegetation
• Choose a fish
• Pollution from agriculture
• First nations fishing
• Rivers and tourism
• Invertebrates found in stream/ river
• placer mining
• sewage treatment
• Hell’s gate (on the Fraser River)
• pulp mills

Also ahead of time your expectations will need to be discussed.

• How many categories do you wish to have notes under
• How developed you want the report to get (just notes?, final draft? Oral report? Visuals?)
• Bibliography

Have students work singly or in pairs. Have them connect to the Internet. On the home page there is a place to type in your search. Happy Exploring!