netTrekker Spotlight User: Juanita James Shares How netTrekker Eliminates Research Frustration!

Written by: netTrekker Spotlight User
Monday, July 12th, 2010

netTrekker is excited to introduce this week’s Spotlight User. Juanita James is a Media Specialist at Pillsbury Math and Science Technology Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Juanita shares how she had a breakthrough in teaching second graders new research skills with netTrekker.

Research is one of our media standards and for years I had been struggling to teach my second grade students how to do online research, or any research for that matter. I tried various types of print materials and a variety of online sites with no success. This quickly became frustrating, especially since we have a high percentage of non-English speaking students and English speaking students who struggle with reading.

I had been using netTrekker with students in third grade and higher, and they really liked it! I didn’t think that second graders would be able to log in and follow directions to get to a resource, but they did! Even non-English speaking students could do this.

At that time we were learning about habitats and animals that live in different environments. I listed names of animals, then students logged in to netTrekker and searched the name of the animal they wanted to learn about. They were able to find pictures and videos containing information that they could then relate back to class. They could even read some of the print information in the Elementary section! As a result, they were able to complete simple animal reports with facts obtained through netTrekker.

netTrekker has completely eliminated my frustration of trying to teach research to second graders!

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Monday, July 12th, 2010 Spotlight User