Intellectual Freedom Breakout

The government has decided that only certain books and materials will be allowed to be taught in schools. All students will read the same books written by authors from a pre-approved list. Your job is to understand what rights as students Congress meant to protect when they wrote the First Amendment and how censorship impacts you.

Here at Keller High School, the key to your academic future lies in your ability to search for and find information with credible and reliable sources. Google will get you started, but you'll need the library's resources to really make a case for how freedom of speech impacts students.

Good research starts with great sources. Databases combine authoritative, scholarly, and academic resources in an easy-to-search website. Each database has a unique collection of information for specific users and searching needs. For this challenge you will select the database that "merges magazines, news, multimedia and more" to engage in discovering the information you need to take a stand.

Information becomes knowledge; knowledge is power!

Databases require passwords to access their information. The key to this first challenge is knowing where you are. Scan the QR code to find the password you need to access the database.

When starting a search, browsing lists of topics may be useful, especially if you don't know what you are looking for specifically.

Take censorship for example. What exactly is it? What kinds of information are available for it?

Primary Sources are first-hand accounts, legal documents, records, photographs, and recordings. They provide an authoritative or "insider" look at a topic.

What exactly does it mean to have a freedom to read, for example? The key to unlocking this clues lies in your ability to find the most recent version of this important document.

If browsing works well when first starting a search, advanced searches help you quickly find information for specific terms. Now that we've explored censorship and freedom to read, let's think about how intellectual freedom impacts students.

Try this advanced search and see how many total results you get. Conduct an advanced search that would find sources that contain both intellectual freedom AND students as KEYwords (HINT: be sure to choose the accurate Boolean term and add up your total results).

Compare the number of results to a Google search...which would you rather look through for high-quality information?

Now that you have the information and knowledge to defend your right to read, arm yourself by checking out a frequently banned book from your library.

If a frequently challenged or banned book doesn't match your reading style, check out anybook!

Just ____________