Counter Model for (Internet) Research

My oldest son received an assignment for a project that required a substantial amount of research. Other classes at my son's school had a month timeline to do the project but since my son's teacher was going on leave, she decided to shorten the project a bit and change the timeline from a month to a week. Most of the information that the kids would need could be found on the Internet so certainly it wouldn't take that long for the kids, right? was the faulty reasoning.

Given that a search term that I entered just to test the wisdom of the teacher's thought process yielded 50 million, 500 thousand results, I think that more guidance on Internet research would be extremely wise.

The results of the project ranged from acceptable to disastrous, heavy on the disastrous at least from my perspective. The timeline was nearly impossible, especially for a child working alone. Here's what she didn't do (a counter model for what should be done in regards to Internet-based research):

• Ask if the kids had Internet access at home (yikes! if nothing else do this to avoid a lawsuit and of course to be fair);
• Discuss search engine types;
• Teach search techniques (e.g., explain what search terms to use and how);
• Explain how search engines rank pages;
• Teach how to distinguish a paid or sponsored search result from a non-sponsored one;
• Teach how to assess the quality, relevance, and currency of a website.

Given the time frame, she should have also:

• Provided names of sites with the type of information needed;
• Provided more names of sites with user-generated content that would allow the kids to make decisions related to the project (a hypothetical trip to another state).

Want to guarantee that kids will stumble (or crash and burn) OR get an inordinate amount of help from their parents or older siblings, the formula for disaster is just above.