Finally Finding Information...and taking lots of notes

What I did:
I started researching using the nutrition navigator that I found when I was searching around on the Internet at the very beginning of my project.

URL: http://navigator.tufts.edu/
It was created by the Tufts School of Nutrition Science and Policy (a very reliable source). The reason why I started with this website was because of its purpose: a rating guide to nutrition websites. It has a very comprehensive list of nutrition websites organized in categories. The categories I used were Women, General Nutrition, and Weight Management.

I found a lot of amazing things through this portal…and I was really excited. I recorded the bibliography information and evaluated the sites. I was skimming and scanning to determine what information would be useful, in any or if all. Since there was so much useful information on each page, I decided to print the pages that had good information on them so I could work on them at a later time instead of taking notes right then and there. I stapled the printed pages to the cover sheet to make sure to keep them all together.

Here are the websites that were most helpful to me in gathering information:
URL: http://www.dietitians.ca/english/index.html
This was created by the Dietitians of Canada to promote health through food and nutrition.

URL: http://www.mayoclinic.com/
This was developed by the Mayo Clinic who’s mission is to empower people to manage their health. They accomplish this by providing useful and up-to-date information and tools that reflect the expertise and standard of excellence of Mayo Clinic.

URL: http://www.brighamandwomens.org/healthweightforwomen/default.asp
This site is sponsored by Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Health-e-Weight for Women is a collection of information geared at making life changes in several areas that can contribute to your quality of life: your food, your emotions and feelings about food, and physical activity.

URL: http://health.ivillage.com/
This site is sponsored by iVillage, The Internet for Women. It has many sections, like a magazine, including heath and fitness.

URL: http://www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines
This site is sponsored by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and features the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2005. This is only published every 5 years, and so it is very current!

URL: http://www.intelihealth.com/
This is sponsored by InteliHealth, a division of Aetna (the insurance carrier) and reviewed by Harvard Medical School.

Well…after all was said and done, everything was stapled, I sure had a lot of papers! But I did have some cool graphs and charts! I wanted to start sorting this information into a folder, but quickly found that these two topics are so closely tied together that the information from one source could easily be placed in both folders. With my organization scheme, I couldn’t place information from one site into both folders. So, I scrapped the folder idea and started sifting through this information and writing actual notes on the cover sheet so I would end up with one page per website. This proved to be helpful with eliminating a lot of the paper mess, but I still had some great charts and graphs, so I kept them stapled to each cover. In the end, I ended up with cover sheets including notes from each of these websites with attached documents that were too good to toss. Click here for an example:
Front - http://portfolio.iu.edu/kaabaker/notes.front.jpg
Back - http://portfolio.iu.edu/kaabaker/notes.back.jpg

What I discovered when I was reading through all of these websites (in printed form!), which ended up being very tedious, was that I had a lot of the same information. It was great because it really confirmed that the information that I was collecting was accurate. However, what a waste of paper and time! If only I had taken notes when I got to a site, I would have realized when I got to the next site that I already had that information. I wouldn’t have spent nearly the amount of time with it that I was spending with all of this “same” information. This made the “note taking” process feel even more tedious and laborious!

What I learned:
Boy do you get excited when you are finding good stuff:
I was addicted to finding great information. I couldn’t get enough of it…and so I kept printing it. This part was really motivating and I didn’t want to stop to take notes.
Takes notes as you go!:
I wasted a lot of time in two ways: in developing a search strategy that I didn’t follow and not following my search strategy by printing everything that I found relevant and worth taking notes on. I really like my organization scheme for bibliography information and evaluation of sources, however, I am not sure how effective it is to take notes on them and classifying the notes at the same time. I will end up working with the information three times(printing, taking notes, and classifying) because I can’t sort it into folders now so I will have to sort the information later. Critically important to the Research Cycle, developed by Jamie McKenzie, is that the findings are structured as they are gathered. I think, organizationally, that this is more important than using the notes section on my cover sheet. The notes section was very limiting because I wanted to sort my information into my two categories, but I couldn’t. However, if I would have taken chunks of notes and sorted them as I went, I would have easily been able to tell what information I already had already collected, and I could have skipped over that information on other web pages. The big question remains, how do you know which information comes from what source? The Pre-Search process, developed by Virginia Rankin, requires student’s note cards keyed to all resources to answer that question. In my case, I could have sorted the chunks of information and number the chunk according to the source it came from.
Revise search plan as necessary:
Even though I did not classify my information when I recorded it, I still was flexible in that I changed my original search plan when I realized that the folder idea was not working. I made it work to some extent in the end by simply taking notes from the information that I collected onto the cover sheet. These weren’t deliberate revisions, I think that it was innate to make it work for what I had and I just made it work.
The Internet isn’t so bad: So far, all of my information is from the Internet. I am feeling a bit uneasy about this because I feel like I should have gone to other resources. But, I realized that it isn’t bad because it has given me the information that I need, especially current information like the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2005.

What I can apply to my teaching:
· Taking notes and classifying as you go is very important. This needs to be a deliberate part of the process that my students will take part in whenever they are gathering information. I like the original idea I tried to follow where students will put note cards in an envelope labeled by question/idea. Even as note cards seem very archaic, it might be beneficial for students to participate in the “physical” part of placing information in categories several times before graduating to creating a web or making a list under the questions/ideas. As students are connecting information to questions/ideas, they will also be connecting information to sources (bibliography information will be written on the cover sheet that I developed) through numbering, color coding, etc.
· Provide scaffolding for students in revising search plans when they aren’t working and developing changes that will make it work.
· The Internet is a great place to find information, you just have to know how and where to look for it and/or find the right portal. I found the right portal, but I also knew how to look for it. Lessons need to be incorporated into most projects to strengthen students searching abilities on the Internet. It is also important to create a starting point for students, like a pathfinder. Having quality sites to go to will get them excited, like I was, when they find pertinent information.