ARC Light

The steps by which a person performs the process of inquiry using the digitally-networked tools for academic exploration.

Background

In the pre-Internet days,  a student would normally begin the process of research by taking a pencil and paper to the library, finding a seat somewhere in the confines of the room, and begin searching for a suitable reference that provided information on the topic.   Reference materials were limited to the hard-copy materials located in the library.   Even the best resources were limited by the sheer volume of paper required to print the publications.

Over the past 100 years alone, thanks largely to the improved mass production techniques of book publishers, the amount of information blossomed, as evidenced by the growing numbers of shelves in most libraries.   Most encyclopedias, for example, grew over the years from a few volumes to the massive shelves of library stacks that most of us remember from our high school and college years.

So massive had our collections grown that, for the common man, the information within the physical collection literally became increasingly difficult to locate.    Librarians with expertise in finding information, coupled with sophisticated card cataloging systems, kept track of most of the growing volumes of information, yet their impact was by and large limited to the patrons who sought out their services.

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Are you concerned about where your child is visiting on the Internet?  Using commercial search engines for academic studies is not the best option for school students seeking information for assignments.  The normal frontline deterrent to prevent their visiting inappropriate sites is to simply tell your child not to go there in the first place.  But, how do you really know?

A remedy can be found with a personal time management application, called ManicTime.   The program tracks which applications you use and presents them in an easy to understand fashion.  ManicTime even shows the web URL and how long you were visiting the page.  This  allows you to see exactly which sites your child visited in their quest for information.