After the students were given their time periods and told to start researching, I quickly realized I needed to slow down.  My group of students in grades six through eight were very comfortable using the Internet as a research tool.  However, it was quickly obvious my students in grades three through five had limited exposure to the Internet.    Therefore, the first week, the students relied on the web sites I had found for them.  The following week, I prepared a lesson on how to search the web using, Yahooligans.  We discussed how to use key terms in the search.  I also showed them how to narrow the search using key words, such as "and."
    My next lesson involved the steps to follow once the students had located a web site.  I first had the students bookmark each site they found.  In order to keep track of their web sites, I demonstrated how to set up a folder in the list of bookmarks (This is found in edit bookmarks under the bookmarks menu in Netscape Navigator).  They were instructed to set up a folder entitled, Gifted Class, in the bookmark folder.  I showed them how to drag the web site they bookmarked to their newly created folder.  Then the students could quickly find the web sites they had found when looking in the list of bookmarks.  The following list includes the web sites most commonly used by my students:
 

    The next lesson involved what to do with pictures they found that they wanted to use in their web sites.  I demonstrated how to hold the mouse down until a menu appears.  They wanted to save picture as.   When they were ask where they wanted to save the picture, I instructed the students how to create a folder with their name on the desktop.  They were told to save any further pictures in this same folder.
    In addition to the Internet, the students also used various C.D.Roms and books to enhance their research.  There were three main C.D.Roms  that the students used in their research:

           Time Traveler CD - A Multimedia Chronicle of History by New Media Schoolhouse
            Encarta 97 Encyclopedia - The Ultimate Information Resource by Microsoft
            Explorers of the New World by SoftKey
 

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Updated November 20, 1999