Research Tools
Grace Istas
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is taking someone else's work or ideas and not giving the owner credit. You can avoid plagiarizing by citing where you got the information or the idea. You could also quote the author on what he/she said.
How To Tell If a Website is Credible
You always want correct information, but not everything on the internet is true. You can tell if a website is credible by the address bar. If it end with .com, there is a 50% chance that it could be false information. If the website ends in .edu, then it is more credible than .com. This is because EDU means that it is a college or another education site. Another way that you can tell if a website is credible is if the website has information for you to contact the author. (If it has the author's name, email, phone number, ect...) Also, if the website doesn't have any grammar/spelling errors then it is probably credible.
Key Words
When you are researching, you want to be as specific as possible. Try to only use the most important words in what you are talking about. For example, if you are researching what year Isaac Newton was born in, you might want to search "Isaac Newton birth date." This will narrow down to what you are talking about. The most important words are called keywords.
Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
There are many differences between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Quoting means that you are saying something that somebody else said, and giving them credit. If you don't put the words in quotations and state who said that, then you would be plagiarizing. Paraphrasing is when you are taking someone else's work but putting it into your own words. This is NOT plagiarism. Summarizing is telling what you saw or what you read. It is telling someone what something is about. An example would be if you saw a movie and your friend asked what it was about. You would tell them what it was about. That is summarizing.
MLA
MLA is a recourse that is available for kids and adults to use. It can help you find information on a topic and help you cite your sources.
How To Gather Information/Our Resources
There are multiple ways to get information. Students can go onto the Mid Continent Public Library website and use their information for their research. We can also go onto MLA and that can help with our research. Another way is use books! Yes, it may be old fashioned but it is a great resource. The last way I am going to talk about is using your key words in Ebsco Host. I think that Ebsco is by far the best because you get exactly what you are looking for if you know how to use key words.