WWW+Search+Strategies


 * African American Heroes Pathfinder**


 * Introduction:** This pathfinder is in response to a co-teaching experience with a teacher in my building. The topic is African American Heroes. The students using the websites and resources listed below are fifth graders who are working on a biography unit in their classroom. They will be using information they collect from print and non-print sources to write a research report, contribute to the My Hero website, and perform at a living history museum to be held in the library.


 * Key Terms:** Some of the key terms I used are biography, African American, African American Heroes, Black History Month, civil rights leaders, Black Americans. Students can also use the name of their specific African American hero to do a search.


 * Search Strategy:** I utilized Google, Yahoo, Yahooligans and Dogpile as my main search engines. These are search engines with which my students are familiar. I used Boolean operators such as AND, NOT, and also quotation marks. I received better results when I used quotation marks throughout all my searches. In addition, I used the tilde “~” symbol when using Google.


 * Resources:** Tulsa Public Schools has an intranet that includes a biography database. Students are only able to access this database on school computers. Others should know that they should check their school’s library website to see if these kinds of databases might be available. In addition to that database, I have included the online resources listed below. In addition to online resources, I have many biographies available for checkout to students.

http://www.aawc.com/Zpaa.html This website is from the African American Web Connection. It is a list of resources about prominent African Americans. Clicking on individuals’ names links you to a website about that person.

http://www.infoplease.com/people.html Thirty thousand biographies can be found on this database by Infoplease. This site also has links to a dictionary, a thesaurus, and encyclopedias. Students can search by typing their research topic in the search window.

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/african-americans/resource/4429.html Teacher Vision offers prominent African American biographies. Students click on the person’s name and are directed to a short biographical sketch of that person. The links also provide related resources such as books by the person. Something I do not like about this site is that they show an advertisement after you click on the original link. You must find the connection link in the upper right hand corner of the webpage and click on that link to be taken to the correct biography page.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/United_States/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Cultures/American__United_States_/African_American/People This site is a directory of famous African Americans listed by Yahoo. When you click on the original links you are taken to another page of links and need to choose from many other links. There may be too many choices on this page, so students may need some extra direction.

http://www.factmonster.com/spot/afroambios.html Students can choose to look up their notable African American hero by category or by last name. The biographies are a little short in length, but there are other links listed that students can go to for more information. There is a very helpful link for students to follow to know how to cite the page they use. http://www.enchantedlearning.com/history/us/aframer/bios/ This website lists short versions of biographies of some notable African Americans. There are a few links to more information about certain people. This site is also helpful to teachers. You can find a coloring book of famous African Americans that you can print pages from for students to color and display with their biography report. http://gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/index.htm Gale is known for accurate educational research materials and this is their website regarding important African Americans as listed on their black history page. These biographies are very detailed and have more resources listed at the end of the entries. The extra resources include books and articles in periodicals. http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/specials/articles/0,6709,713948,00.html This website has limited information about a few African Americans. It does have questions and answers about a few people, and there are interviews and quizzes for students to read and take. There are also teacher resources with reproducible pages. http://www.biography.com/blackhistory/index.jsp This site is made by the Biography Channel. There are 200 notable African Americans listed on this page. There are also photographs, quotes and videos. The people are separated into categories. The biographies are detailed and there are related links located on the left side of the screen on each page of a biography. The site is interesting and helpful. I particularly liked all the photographs. http://www.biography.com/bio4kids/ This website is another part of the Biography Channel family. This site also has videos and photographs along with biographies. It also has a couple of game areas that are challenging to students. When a student puts a person’s name in the search engine on this site, it takes them from the kids section of the site to the adult section. There is a warning page that comes up before the student is taken to the adult section. There is a warning to students that they should not give personal information out on the internet. http://inventors.about.com/library/blblackinventors.htm This site is specifically about African American inventors. The inventors’ names are listed alphabetically. The biographies are detailed and list extra links to other resources and related articles. http://www.africanamericans.com/people.html This website has detailed biographies of many African Americans. They are listed alphabetically and also by category. There are photos, quotes, and articles from newspapers. There are also many links throughout the articles to more related information. http://www.myhero.com/myhero/ This is the website wherein the students enter the information they want to say about their particular African American hero. This is one of the assignments the teacher wanted to create. The teacher entered all the information students needed before they went to the website. Others are able to see comments made by others. http://pbskids.org/aaworld/face.html This is PBS’s African American World for Kids. Students can send an e-card, play a matching game and read comments from kids around the United States about their favorite African American heroes.