Google, Wikipedia are American kids’ top tools for school research
Are you old enough to remember when doing research at school meant opening up incredibly boring encyclopedias or, even worse, flipping through your library’s card catalogue? Well, American kids these days don’t have to put up with such indignities as they’re turning to more modern tools to help them write research papers. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has conducted a survey of over 2,400 middle school and high school teachers showing that 94% of teachers said their students were “very likely” to use Google (GOOG) to conduct research while 75% said the same of Wikipedia. Meanwhile, just 18% of teachers said their students were very likely to consult textbooks and only 12% said their students were very likely to use other kinds of printed books.
