This online research module creator guides teachers through the process of building an online research project that will engage and challenge students. These modules can be designed to integrate research and presentation strategies with challenging content from state academic content standards. Structured around the research cycle, these modules allow students to go beyond traditional "go find out about" research topics. Instead, they investigate thought-provoking questions, sort and synthesize information, and create engaging presentations to report their conclusions. Extensive support for teachers, including sample research units, articles, rubrics, and online templates, is provided at the website. (author/ncl)

This professional development site is appropriate for all career-technical teachers in that it explores, and substantiates with research, the methodology students use when developing and writing research essays. Identifying and targeting 6 traditionally problematic areas that keep students from making meaningful connections as they research and respond in writing, this site offers practical applications for teaching critical thinking, interdisciplinary connections, inductive and deductive reasoning, and a feel for what isn't necessarily articulated in the stated research. These 6 areas--Question, Plan, Gather, Sort, Sift, Analyze, Synthesize, and Evaluate--build on established ways of teaching research by asking teachers and students to consider 3 questions that provide critical perspective: (1) Why? (2) How? and (3) Which is best? Getting students to explore these questions, as well as having them consider their research in terms of the scaffolding method presented at the site, will help them to develop a sense of understanding the past, seeing the relevance in the present, and planning for the future.