Sources

Why Google and Wikipedia might not be the best... or when they can be useful...

In talking about sources, seems like there're several angles

__Finding Sources__ I'm thinking along the lines of getting kids to think more creatively than just using open pages that come up in a search engine (i.e. David Library of the Revolution, calling your physician about a medical topic (or some other expert in the field), print resources, etc. And definitely learning how to find and access the databases available through libraries like ours or colleges (these may be closed to the general public). And also databases that are open to the public like library of congress or museums, etc.: they're free but a google search doesn't always access info within the database.

Link to __Library__ and a discussion of the usefulness of the librarian and the library to finding sources.

Discussion of getting students to not be insular and alone in researching.

__Evaluating Sources__: 1. __there are some great exercises to get kids to recognize that not all web pages have the same credibility and even things like an "edu" tag aren't a guarantee.__ (**YES.** PeterA likes the idea of links to excercises or any kind of excercise that we teachers could use in a class.)

2. For advanced students: Some philosophical discussion of the problem of always having partial information that is produced by or mediated by or used by motivated human commentators. Does this means that we throw up our hands and say "There is no soid truth so what's the point?" or buy into any number of clever and dismissive statements about truth and history.

__Primary and Secondar Sources:__
 * 1) meanings of primary and secondary sources (perhaps with link or examples of both types)
 * 2) a philosophical discussion about A) what are commonly said to be the values of these different types of courses
 * 3) __an excercise (which would need to be found or made) that looks at a primary and secondary source and asks students to assess the usefullness of the sources__