| Online resources open worlds of information to upper elementary school students. At their stage of cognitive development, however, they lack the critical thinking skills to evaluate and sort the large quantities of information they find on the World Wide Web using Internet search engines such as Google. On the other hand, online subscription resources (e.g., World Book Online), which are available through the school in this study, offer students fewer yet high quality resources, often at their reading level. However, these child-friendly online subscription resources were unfamiliar to and underutilized by the students at the school. This quantitative study surveyed a sample of the school's fourth and fifth graders prior to and after direct instruction by their teachers on the existence and benefits of online subscription resources. More of the students chose to use the school Web site and online subscription resources for their research after the intervention. |
