Teaching Kids Web Research Skills

Dulcinea Media has a lot of ambitions for a little company. And we madly pursue them all at once. And thus we take great pride that all of our initiatives have gelled together in a single endeavor: findingEducation's On This Day Challenge.

Our mission is driven by the fact that most people cannot find online, evaluate, and put to use the critical information they need in their daily lives. This is true even of students, who facilely use the Web for social purposes, but can’t effectively research online. They rely heavily on major search engines, and review only the first few results. They can’t discriminate between a credible resource and a suspect one, can’t locate primary sources and, above all, don’t know how to digest what they’ve learned and communicate it to others.

Our company mission is to help educators change it.

In furtherance of our mission, our first product was findingDulcinea, a content Web site that helps users find credible and comprehensive information online about thousands of subjects. Its most popular feature is "On This Day," which each day details an important event in history, including the preamble and the denouement. In November 2008, I explained the genesis of our On This Day.

The second site we launched was EncontrandoDulcinea, a Spanish language sister site that offers much of the content on findingDulcinea, translated into Spanish. Its traffic has begun to boom in large part due to the popularity of the On This Day feature in Spanish.

The third site we launched was SweetSearch, a custom search engine that is derived from our tens of thousands of hours of work on findingDulcinea. SweetSearch only searches 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated by our staff. It eliminates results from the junky sites that rank high in other search engines and waste students’ time.

Earlier this month, we introduced findingEducation, a free tool that serves as a meeting place for educators to share insight and outstanding links, assignments and lesson plans with each other and their students. We have seeded the links library with hundreds of links contributed by the teachers and librarians who created findingDulcinea's Web Guides on education topics, and SweetSearch is available to help find other high quality links. Our hope is that teachers from all over the world come to view findingEducation as their community site, one whose continued development they largely direct.

And the endeavor that arises from all of our years of hard work on each of this products is findingEducation's On This Day Challenge. Through this Challenge, students, working individually or in teams, will learn to find and evaluate quality Web sites for online history research, learn how to organize and write a research article about historical events, and gain an appreciation of how historical events have shaped the world.

Drawing on the plethora of material on findingDulcinea, we provide extensive guidance to teachers and students on how to find and evaluate Web resources and organize them into an article about an important historical event. SweetSearch can be used to search all of these resources at once. All articles in the Challenge will be published to the teacher's public page on findingEducation, and a broad range of impressive entries will be highlighted in our newsletter and on findingDulcinea.

The number of early sign-ups to the Challenge has been gratifying, and we eagerly look forward to sharing reports about its progress throughout the school year. We believe that, for students who participate in the Challenge will learn critical life skills of finding online, evaluating, organizing, using and communicating information.

May their love give us love

Last year, I wrote about how, when I think of 9/11, I choose to remember the love.

The love shown by thousands of rescue workers and ordinary citizens, in NYC, Washington, D.C. and on Flight 93, when they knowingly put their lives at grave risk so that others may live. The love expressed by the many victims who lived for a desperate hour or more after their fate was sealed, and used the last precious minutes of their lives to call loved ones; all that mattered at the end of their lives was the love they created along the way. The loved expressed by victims’ family members, many of whom spent weeks desperately hoping that their loved ones had somehow miraculously been spared. And the love that I witnessed when I emerged from my office building in midtown Manhattan in early afternoon, and indeed throughout America and much of the rest of the world, for months afterward.

And so tomorrow, I will once again think about the manner in which so many people responded to the certain end of their lives by calling their loved ones. Though I hopefully won’t be imperiled myself, I will call or email many of my loved ones that I have been meaning to get back in touch with, and with that small gesture let them know how I feel about them.

I will also recall my Aunt Eileen’s comment to my post about how the heroes of 9/11 and the ensuing months (and indeed years) saved us “from having that day be remembered as one of being simply victims, totally demoralized…. and turned the story into one of great pride in our values as a country and in the bravery and devotion to duty that our people can show.” And I will beam with pride about our values as a country, and how brave and devoted to duty our people can be.

And recalling the timeless words of firefighter Mike Moran, who in October 2001 declared that his brother and his many close friends and crewmates who perished “are not gone, because they are not forgotten,” I will recall all of those ordinary people who lovingly did remarkable things that day so that others may live.

May their love give us love.

Tips for Enjoying Saratoga Race Course

Tomorrow is my favorite day of the year – it’s when track announcer Tom Durkin and the entire crowd at Saratoga Race Course join together to announce “And they’re off at Saratoga” as, for the 141st time, the horses spring from the gate for the first race of the meet, which runs 36 days through Labor Day.

The mere fact that you’re reading this means I probably don’t have to explain to you why so many horse racing fans of all stripes consider the Saratoga race meet to be heaven on earth. So instead the focus of this blog post is to provide some tips on how best to enjoy it, from someone who has visited Saratoga every summer for 34 years.

Where to Stay

For many, the only place to consider staying is in the city of Saratoga, and there are many fine, though expensive, choices there. For those willing to drive a little bit to and from the track each day to save $100 or more per night on a room, you will find outstanding, moderately priced lodging at each of the Hampton Inn at Clifton Park (10 miles south), the Century House in Latham (15 miles south) and the Desmond, (north of Albany, about 20 miles south of the track).


The Crowds

Some people love big crowds and packed restaurants; others prefer to attend when things are more staid. While Saratoga is never really quiet during the racing season, the town and racetrack are most crowded on Opening Day (July 29), and during the ten days preceding and including Travers weekend (August 19 to 30). The quietest weekends are the first one (August 1 & 2) and Labor Day (Sept 5 to 7).

Families

Saratoga is famous for its picnic tables in the backyard, which offer a terrific view of the horses entering and circling the paddock where they are saddled. However, it is a long walk to the track to see the horses race. Arrive very early and stake out a spot on the picnic tables at the top of the stretch, where you watch the horses duel at the most critical juncture of the race.

Tickets

You can buy general admission to the grandstand or Clubhouse at the gate. If you want reserved seats, they go on sale at 8 a.m. at the booth at Gate A on Union Avenue. But to get the best reserved seats, buy them on eBay, where they are usually available at a reasonable mark-up.

Parking at the Track

Savvy baseball fans park near the exit to the stadium lot, so they are first out after the game. So it is with Saratoga, where on a crowded day, a five-minute walk will save you 25 minutes of fighting traffic afterwards, and a few dollars as well. Many of the homes near Nelson Avenue let you park on their lawns for $5 - $15; the closer to the track, the more it costs, and the longer it takes to escape. If you are driving to Saratoga from the south, take exit 13N from the Northway (Rte 87) rather than Exit 14, and take a right on Crescent Avenue up to Nelson.

Breakfast / Backstretch Tour

What they say about this is really true – for the novice racing fan, there is no better way to experience Saratoga than eating breakfast at the rail and watching the morning workouts, and taking a tram tour of the backstretch.

Nightlife

Saratoga’s main street, Broadway, is bustling most nights of the week during the racing meet, and has dozens of fine restaurants and lively nightlife establishments, with something to suit everyone’s taste, and always a slew of new openings each season.

The Starting Gate Sports Bar, the Ole Bryan Inn and the Parting Glass are three of my favorites.

Must Visits

On every visit, I drive ten miles out of town on Route 29, in Greenwich, NY, you’ll find The Hand Melon Farm, which grows and sells the best cantaloupe melon you will ever find. It also sells other fruits and vegetables grown on the property. A short distance further up the road, you’ll find The Ice Cream Man, which sells outrageously good ice cream made in the shop.

Saratoga State Park is stunningly beautiful with its tall pine trees, and offers a great place for running, walking or biking.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center offers an eclectic calendar of artists, including Bruce Springsteen on August 25. Spots on the lawn offer a decent view at a bargain price of $41 for the rock concerts.

To see how the other half lives, be sure to drive by the mansions on Broadway, out past Route 29/50.

Web Links

Visit the official Web sites for Saratoga, as well as for the local newspapers, in advance to get a sense of the local flavor.

The Saratoga Chamber of Commerce has info on where to eat & stay and what to do.

Saratoga Race Course is operated by the New York Racing Association; visit its official Web site.

The Saratoga Special is a terrific, free publication available ubiquitously in town, and also available online for (free) registered users.

The Albany Times Union offers some of the best coverage of all aspects of racing at Saratoga. Here are links to its blogs about the Racing, the town from the perspective of shop and restaurant owners, and a newsy blog about goings on in town.

The Saratogian is the local newspaper.

My favorite Web site is Equidaily, which offers a great roundup of horse racing coverage and advice about Saratoga.

Well Blog Fail: One PB&J Doesn't Fit All

The New York Times Well Blog recently hosted a conversation with a fitness guru about eating before a run.

Anyone who read this, and who has read my “Ten Tips for First-Time Marathoners” should have immediately thought, “uh-oh.”

Leslie Bonci, the sports nutritionist consulted by the Times, gives some good advice. As my Tip #9 says, you should think of food “as part of your equipment,” or to put it another way, as fuel that powers your body. But as to her detailed advice on exactly what, and when, to eat…

Re-read Tip #1 (this time in caps): BEWARE OF ONE SIZE FITS ALL ADVICE.

Bonci instructs Times readers to eat “a peanut butter and jelly wrap cut into little pieces” an hour before exercise. That might work well for Bonci, but I recently ran the Fairfield Half Marathon three hours after eating a peanut butter sandwich. Suffice to say that I was repeatedly reminded of what I ate for breakfast as I plowed through the hills of Fairfield. And visited a porta-potty for the first time ever during a race. Three times. And struggled to breathe up the steep hills because of gooey peanut butter lining... you get the point.

The comments section of the Bonci post particularly concerns me – and proves my point. Commenter Sharon writes, “Wow, I do everything wrong!” and then describes a routine that doesn’t fit Bonci’s advice. But it may well work for Sharon, and now she’s going to change her routine to what works for Bonci. Amazingly, Well Blog editor Tara Parker-Pope replies, “You’re not alone… I’m doing everything wrong too!” So, the writer of Well Blog and the bulk of its readers, have suddenly discovered they’re “doing everything wrong” after years of successful exercise, because they don’t do everything exactly like Bonci does? Well Blog Fail.

Everyone is different. You need to trust your own body and experience, not the word of experts. A few years ago, a fitness guru sent me and 600 other first-time marathoners an email saying that stretching is all but unnecessary for long distance runners. This may be true for him, but if I don’t stretch for two days, I can’t even walk without intense pain, and I stretch for hours in the 24 hours leading up to a race.

To take another example, once I was advising two small-framed women on their first marathon, I asked an experienced small-framed woman marathoner to give them advice on hydration. Why? Because I perspire heavily and weigh 200 lbs., and so I consume 1.5 gallons of fluid during a marathon, as repeated experience has told me this is the right amount for me. If these women followed my routine, they might drown, and I can't begin to guess what amount of fluid was proper for them.

I have some recommendations on eating for a race – I eat continuously the night before, and snack lightly on granola bars and orange slices as I run – but you need to test out different strategies when you train. You’re the only expert on your own body.

 If your body chokes up when you chew granola, or orange slices, or peanut butter, ditch them and try something else, and when you find what works, stick with it, no matter what I, Ms. Bonci, or the Well Blog may say.

Assassins and their Fatal Fictions

FindingDulcinea's "On This Day" for July 2 contains several fascinating, little-known facts about the assassination of President Garfield. One that struck me was the defense asserted by assassin Charles Guiteau at his trial: “Some of these days instead of saying ‘Guiteau the assassin’, they will say ‘Guiteau the patriot.’”

Guiteau believed that the murder was an act in the public interest. This belief is hardly exceptional as assassins go. Self-delusion of a noble, heroic purpose is a common thread connecting murderous lone actors of history.

What convinces an assassin that he’s a national hero? How does one man, out of so many millions who might share similar political beliefs and passions, conclude that it is his destiny to commit murder for the greater good?

Guiteau defended his action as “a political necessity,” and was so confident of general approbation that he instructed General William Tecumseh Sherman, “I am going to the Jail. Please order out your troops and take possession of the Jail at once.”

A prior findingDulcinea “On This Day” about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln reveals a similar theme, as John Wilkes Booth was shocked at the public’s grief and failure to applaud the murder. His letters provide disturbing insight into his motivations, such as this excerpt printed by the New York Times: “When a country like this spurns justice from her side, She forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act, as his conscience may approve.”

The recent assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller once again echoed this same sad, deluded tale. Although many tried to link the murder to the heated rhetoric of our cable news culture, only one man translated this passion into violence.

FindingDulcinea Senior Writer Shannon Firth analyzed Tiller's murder and explored the motives of assassins, detailing the three types categorized by author Kris Hollington. There are “wolves,” who seek notoriety, “jackals,” who are hired hands, and finally “foxes,” who are “novices hoping to make a political statement.”

According to Hollington, these foxes are intensely passionate, but are also “ordinary, unremarkable people, often failures: the antithesis of the men and women they try to kill.” Although they justify their actions in political and often religious language, “it’s all within the troubled mind of the lone individual… almost a movie in their mind.”

Do their personal failures, then, prod them towards an alternate reality, in which they can play the film-star heroes? John Hinckley, Jr., possibly inspired by the movie Taxi Driver, believed that by shooting Ronald Reagan he could win the love of actress Jodie Foster. He later explained himself, according to PBS, with this rumination on fiction: “The line dividing life and art can be invisible. After seeing enough hypnotizing movies and reading enough magical books, a fantasy life develops which can either be harmless or quite dangerous.”

I suppose heroism, and even history, is always something of a fiction, a combination of reality and the myths built around it. But I can’t stop wondering what it takes to push an individual into a myth so fatal, so extreme, and so disconnected from the society he believes he is saving.

Parenting, Not Lecturing

Reading findingDulcinea’s recent article on what parents should know about teen dating reminded me of Otto Frank's remarks when he first read his daughter Anne Frank’s diary in the 1960s:

“For me, it was a revelation. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.”

Isn't this what every father reading his daughter's diary would think?

So, short of reading a diary, how do fathers (and mothers) learn the depths of their children’s thoughts and feelings? And how can parents use this knowledge to safely steer their teenagers past the risks that confront today’s teens?

I don’t want to set myself up as a parenting guru, out of fear that my Internet-savvy daughters will post a counterpoint in the comment section. But that findingDulcinea article confirmed many of the strategies and insights I’ve stumbled upon while raising kids.

First off, I’ve found that an “open dialogue” is, as the article says, essential. Don’t do all the talking. Or even most of it. Ask questions – their answers might surprise you. More importantly, behave as if there is no "right" answer, and no repercussions for the "wrong" answer. Listen to and reflect on their responses, and then act on them.

Heatedly lecturing them about drugs or sex, for example, is often counter-productive. Before you try to scare them, ask about the landscape they encounter and how they feel about it. For all you know, your kid may be struggling not with drugs or alcohol, but with fitting in as someone who doesn’t use them. In that case, she’d need support, coping strategies, and a sympathetic ear more than a threatening harangue.

And, having felt invincible myself at age 16, I always attributed reckless teen behavior to illusions of invulnerability, but a recent study found the opposite can be true. A shocking number of teens simply don't care about their safety because they believe they will die by age 35. Imagine shouting at an irresponsible teen that she wasn't invincible, only to discover that her recklessness stemmed from hopeless fatalism. Ask about the problem before you try to solve it.

Another way to build trust with your teen is through “ground rules” – for both child and parent. Your kids should understand what you consider unacceptable behavior, but should also feel they can come to you when there’s a real problem. Everyone makes mistakes, and your son or daughter is not only a human being, but one still very much developing. Who survives adolescence without a crisis or three? And when that crisis comes, they need to turn to you, without worrying about the repercussions, or else you may only found out about the crisis from someone else, and when it’s too late to do much about it.

For instance, if they’re stranded somewhere drunk or high or just in a troubling situation, it’s more important that they get home safely than that they get grounded for a month. Let them know that they can call you with immunity. The very act of picking up the phone to ask for help is an admission of wrongdoing, and, for their safety, you need to accept it as their apology.

That said, they should still take such situations seriously. If they’re calling you for help often, then there’s a bigger problem to address, and one that requires both vigilance and consequences. Some parents even make contracts with their teens, so that each party acknowledges its own responsibilities.

I don’t have all of the answers, and neither do you. But, as another article stresses, a strong family support system can make the difference between a healthy and a troubled teen. That support system can only be built through great communication with your kids. Your role is not simply to impart wisdom learned from "when you were a kid." Things change, teens change, and things likely never were the way you remember them anyway.

A Casual Marathon: It's Relay for Life Season

You’ve read about my running, but you may not know that my passion for marathons was born in a tent on my local high school football field. Long before the Boston Marathon, I walked/ran the Relay for Life, and currently teams across the country are running and preparing to run in support of the American Cancer Society.

I love the challenge and rigor of a full-fledged marathon, but I know how daunting it can be. The Relay for Life is the perfect first step for people looking for the community and exhilaration of running for charity, but not prepared to abandon their hot chocolate by the fireplace for a grueling regime of winter training.

The 24-hour event requires no experience, and participants only have to keep one team member circling the track at all times. The rest of the team can cheer the others on or, of course, recharge in tents with vital doses of sugar and caffeine. The money raised supports cancer research and awareness, while the experience itself promotes community for cancer survivors and their supporters.

I can’t promise, though, that you’ll be able to stop there; as I’ve written before, marathon fever is surprisingly contagious. After the Relay for Life, I – along with five other findingDulcinea staffers – ran an incredible twelve-person, 181-mile, 26-hour Ragnar Relay. This amazing event may seem, well, miles beyond the Relay for Life, but it also welcomes novices and offers training programs for the beginner and the experienced runner alike. Take a look at their website, and, if you still need inspiration, read our reasons to run.

You can find your local Relay for Life here, along with other ways to get involved on the event’s main website. And just in case, you may want to check out our Web Guide to Running. Who knows? Maybe next year the Boston Marathon won’t seem quite so far-fetched.