BACK TO SCHOOL MEANS BACK TO RESEARCH

Where K-12 teachers and students can find the best on the web

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Matt Bowden
Email: mtbowden1@jhu.edu
Phone: 410-735-6045

BALTIMORE August, 2007— By now, Google and Wikipedia are the uncontested first stops when students do research for school. And for good reason: where else but Google can you type in “robotics” and come up with 36 million possible answers?

But what educators and parents often ask when they see these sources cited is “Where did you find it?” and “How do you know it’s true?”

“The amount of information is just overwhelming,” says Melissa Hartman, editor of Imagine magazine at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. “On the one hand, you’ve got all the resources you could ever want at your fingertips, but then you have to separate fact from fiction. Most students and teachers don’t have the time.”

To make the process easier, Imagine, along with several other magazines and websites dedicated to academically talented kids, have started offering selective research alternatives for students and teachers looking for engaging online resources without sacrificing accuracy.

A more discerning way to search
“When we started work on our site, we thought we needed to be exhaustive,” says Dr. Linda Brody, director of Cogito.org, a Hopkins-based website dedicated to teens interested in math and science. “But we found that, in reality, we needed to be more discerning.”

For Cogito, whose board includes the president of MIT and a Nobel prize winner, their discernment has resulted in an active collection of around 1,200 research sources geared toward students and teachers that can be filtered by interest. A quick search can bring up a visual interpretation of the periodic table,  a zoological library, or a game tracing the invention of the microwave to the mouse.

And while sites that aggregate links by topic are sometimes faulted for including out-dated or inaccurate information, Cogito keeps a science- and math- savvy staff monitoring their archive of links, and invites students and teachers to weigh in, too. “We’re eager to have kids and teachers make their voices heard—the members can rate the sites, and we can take sites on and off as they suggest,” Brody says. “We want teachers and students to feel like they can be involved.”

Making a connection
The interactive community Brody mentions is a ubiquitous feature of most of these academic sites. Art of Problem Solving offers “Math Jams”, improvisational problem solving sessions for students and teachers of all ages; Seed magazine asks readers to post to blogs on “The Handsome Brain” and “A Feast of Bugs”.  And at Imagine, almost half of the articles are student-written.

Hartman says the goal is to connect teens with the best information while giving them the chance to hone their talents. “Imagine has always worked to give readers a forum to express themselves while exploring their educational options, whether it’s been pointing them to the best tools in the college admissions process, academic programs and competitions, or research sites.”

A four-time winner of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, Imagine has become one of the leading publications in gifted education over the past 15 years, making it a prime source for teachers and parents looking for fresh ways to engage their students.

As a start, Hartman recommends several sites to spark kids’ interests and give teachers an extra boost when planning assignments:

• Cogito: www.cogito.org – Cogito is the site where a teenage Stephen Hawking could have sparred with Albert Einstein over physics. Site members get the chance to ask questions of some of the biggest names in math and science, while the curated links can be narrowed by interest. Cogito also makes life easier for teachers and students with a “Best Bets” section for general interests.
   
  
• The Internet Public Library: www.ipl.org -- The Internet Public Library applies traditional librarianship to digital content. Librarians evaluate the sites and provide annotations to the links. The TeenSpace section provides everything from homework help to tips for writing a great research paper. Very highly recommended.
  
  
• The Nobel Prize Homepage: www.nobelprize.org --  Anyone can Google a list of Nobel Prize winners, but this site goes further. You can not only read biographies of the winners but hear many of them speak or watch some video interviews. Read excerpts from their works as well as fascinating articles about their work by contemporary scholars. Nobel Prizes are awarded in chemistry, economics, literature, medicine, peace, and physics, so this site has something for just about every academic interest.
  
  
• Museum Stuff: www.museumstuff.com -- Museums are treasure troves for students and teachers alike, and virtual museums are perhaps the next best thing. At Museum Stuff, you can jump right into the museums featured on the site, or you can explore by geography or topic, and as you click through the site, links are sorted and annotated in a very useful way.
  
  
• National Geographic News: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/ -- It’s just what you’d expect from National Geographic: lush photos, great writing, and fascinating topics. But it’s also got the digital components—video, podcasts, RSS feeds, e-newsletters—that make the content even more engaging. The site organizes material by topic: Animals & Nature, Archaeology & Paleontology, Environment, History & Culture, Science & Space, Health, Travel & Adventure, and Weird!
  
  

About The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY)
CTY conducts the nation's oldest and most extensive academic talent search and offers educational programming for students with exceptionally high academic ability. CTY parallels, and complements, a gifted child’s regular school experience. CTY’s programs and students have been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and other premier American publications. Other information:

• CTY is a nonprofit center at The Johns Hopkins University.
• CTY draws students from 19 states and DC, as well as students from over 80 countries.
• 2006-7 saw over 73,000 second- through eighth graders participate in CTY’s Talent Searches.
• CTY provided $4.576 million in financial aid to over 2,150 students in 2005-6.
• In the 2005-6 Talent Search, 19.8% of students in CTY’s Talent Search were identified as underrepresented.
• Gifted students qualifying for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program may join the Talent Search virtually for free.