More Summer Outreach: DoIT ITA!

They're not quite in high school yet, but this August Madison-area ninth graders participating in University of Wisconsin's DoIT ITA program are already preparing for college courses.

DoIT is University of Wisconsin-Madison's Division of Information Technology; each summer DoIT hosts a two-week Information Technology Academy (ITA) pre-college program for a group of high school freshmen from all over Madison.

As part of the ITA program, the Water Library and Steenbock Memorial Library teamed up to host an internet search strategy seminar for ITA student participants. The seminar theme was "What's in your water bottle?" and featured a whole host of activities designed to help the students learn more about searching scholarly databases while investigating the impact of bottled water.

The water bottle research guide (pictured above) helped DoIT ITA students
learn more about searching academic databases.

The seminar included a water taste test, which challenged students to choose the best-tasting water among 3 different samples. The students were also asked to guess which samples were bottled and which samples came from the library's tap. An overwhelming majority of the students preferred the taste of the library's tap water. Many were surprised by the results.

A short video about the increase of bottled water consumption was shown.

Finally, a database scavenger hunt challenged the ninth graders to find information about the growth in bottled-water consumption since 1980 and which university campuses in the US are banning the sales of bottled water. This scavenger hunt also helped introduce different scholarly databases and how to best use keyword searches.

This program is beneficial and fun for the high school participants. The Water Library is so grateful to be involved each year!