IETA 2025

Children are increasingly interacting with resources online, often outside of controlled environments in which teachers can curate, guide, and scaffold how they access information. Developing search literacy skills and effective strategies for locating and utilizing information on the internet has become essential. Each step of the search process (choice of search tool, task definition, query formulation, search result evaluation, etc.) presents specific challenges for children that adults do not often face, so additional scaffolding and support is needed to provide children with the tools they need to become better searchers. In this workshop, we will explore the obstacles encountered by children at each of these steps in the search process and discuss strategies for addressing these aspects across different search tools. We highlight the importance of learning to search and the necessity of providing tools that empower children to determine what is appropriate for them and their unique and individual information needs.