Playing at Research?

The 17 sixth-graders in the Westhampton Beach Middle School classroom sat at tables, staring up at their teacher. In front of each was an IBM laptop, screen slanted down. "You're going to have to figure out how you think King Tut died," Cindy Hart said to her social studies students. Screens went up, fingers tapped keyboards and ear buds emerged from backpacks. Students skimmed a news story, clicked through photos, watched a video clip and visited an interactive Web site about the Egyptian boy king. "It's better than just looking in a textbook to find answers," said Ricky Wagner, 11, who received the assignment from his own teacher in a classroom down the hall.

More interesting to me than the fact that these students are using the internet to learn ancient history is how they get to the information that they need to complete the assignment. I am more and more interested in the paths that students "instinctually" take to do research. This can be fruitful stuff. I want to see where they go first, what tangents they take,how they multitask...in essence the work-play that they do.

Late night musings :-)