Sunday, October 31, 2010
Reflection Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom
EDUC 6712: Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom
The most striking revelation I had during this course was a comment that David Warlick made about today’s students and the consideration that being literate goes beyond the ability to read a book (Laureate, 2009). Information literacy and utilizing the Internet is the “New Literacies” and it encompasses
• Exposing what is true
• Evaluating the information
• Understanding the grammar of the Internet (Laureate, 2009)
Inquiry based projects can prove to be time consuming when using technology but the end product is another way students can express relevance to the learning that has taken place. Sara Armstrong (Laureate, 2009) notes how digital storytelling, creating a skit, doing a presentation with slides and data, writing a story, and presenting a play are products presented to show both the meaning and learning that has taken place in an effective way. My other revelation was the ability that students possess when it comes to creating their own questions around a theme that the teacher defines. Given the tools modeled by the teacher such as bubble maps and flowcharts can encourage students to develop questions around a theme and answering the questions they develop through research.
The knowledge that I experienced through this course made me realize that I need to dedicate more instructional time to all of the aspects of researching information. In the past I would instruct students on keywords and Booleans for 20 minutes out of a 50 minute class. The activity that followed was usually creating a crossword puzzle utilizing 15 keywords related to the December holidays such as Kwanza, Christmas, and or Chanukah. The time allotted for this activity was 2 and ½ class periods or approximately 2hrs. Even though this proved to be a fun activity for the students many had to do research to accumulate the terms that related to the holidays in the form of artifacts, food, songs, movies, and or characters. Even though these fourth graders conducted research in the past through webquests, I always provided links to sites where they could locate the information. When the students have to locate sites on their own many times they would pick the first few on the page of hits and become frustrated when they could not locate viable and reliable sources. This course made me realize that I need to model, facilitate, assess more frequently and take additional time to address all of the “New Literacies” so that my students are literate according to the standards of the 21st century. The knowledge and the experience that I have gained in this course has influenced me to instruct more effectively by utilizing the QUEST model- Questioning- Understanding- Evaluating- Synthesizing- Transforming- for Internet inquiry (Eagleton & Dobler 2007).
One professional development goal that I would like to pursue is to develop instructional online screencasting using a site such as ScreenToaster http://www.screentoaster.com/
for students and teachers to utilize that supports the QUEST model for Internet inquiry. I found this modality of technology to be very useful to instruction especially as a tool for a point of reference. I would develop these screencasts, obtain permission from the administration and then post the description of the screencast and URL to the school network.
I would also like to collaborate with other classroom teachers on the 2-3 grade level to integrate more of their curriculum content into project based learning assignments in technology. To accomplish this goal I would incorporate a content area unit where the classroom teacher and myself would review the goals and objectives in the content area and new literacies. Further collaboration with the classroom teacher would be to discuss the modality for the final product and a rubric. Students will be more engaged and have the opportunity to be more creative if they can make connections with the material both in the classroom and through technology. This type of collaboration would allow me to build upon, explore and expand upon my learning in this course where I would practice and become confident in my abilities in information technology and or technology skills.
References:
Eagleton, M.B. & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading to the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Information Literacy: Evaluating Information. Baltimore: Author.
The most striking revelation I had during this course was a comment that David Warlick made about today’s students and the consideration that being literate goes beyond the ability to read a book (Laureate, 2009). Information literacy and utilizing the Internet is the “New Literacies” and it encompasses
• Exposing what is true
• Evaluating the information
• Understanding the grammar of the Internet (Laureate, 2009)
Inquiry based projects can prove to be time consuming when using technology but the end product is another way students can express relevance to the learning that has taken place. Sara Armstrong (Laureate, 2009) notes how digital storytelling, creating a skit, doing a presentation with slides and data, writing a story, and presenting a play are products presented to show both the meaning and learning that has taken place in an effective way. My other revelation was the ability that students possess when it comes to creating their own questions around a theme that the teacher defines. Given the tools modeled by the teacher such as bubble maps and flowcharts can encourage students to develop questions around a theme and answering the questions they develop through research.
The knowledge that I experienced through this course made me realize that I need to dedicate more instructional time to all of the aspects of researching information. In the past I would instruct students on keywords and Booleans for 20 minutes out of a 50 minute class. The activity that followed was usually creating a crossword puzzle utilizing 15 keywords related to the December holidays such as Kwanza, Christmas, and or Chanukah. The time allotted for this activity was 2 and ½ class periods or approximately 2hrs. Even though this proved to be a fun activity for the students many had to do research to accumulate the terms that related to the holidays in the form of artifacts, food, songs, movies, and or characters. Even though these fourth graders conducted research in the past through webquests, I always provided links to sites where they could locate the information. When the students have to locate sites on their own many times they would pick the first few on the page of hits and become frustrated when they could not locate viable and reliable sources. This course made me realize that I need to model, facilitate, assess more frequently and take additional time to address all of the “New Literacies” so that my students are literate according to the standards of the 21st century. The knowledge and the experience that I have gained in this course has influenced me to instruct more effectively by utilizing the QUEST model- Questioning- Understanding- Evaluating- Synthesizing- Transforming- for Internet inquiry (Eagleton & Dobler 2007).
One professional development goal that I would like to pursue is to develop instructional online screencasting using a site such as ScreenToaster http://www.screentoaster.com/
for students and teachers to utilize that supports the QUEST model for Internet inquiry. I found this modality of technology to be very useful to instruction especially as a tool for a point of reference. I would develop these screencasts, obtain permission from the administration and then post the description of the screencast and URL to the school network.
I would also like to collaborate with other classroom teachers on the 2-3 grade level to integrate more of their curriculum content into project based learning assignments in technology. To accomplish this goal I would incorporate a content area unit where the classroom teacher and myself would review the goals and objectives in the content area and new literacies. Further collaboration with the classroom teacher would be to discuss the modality for the final product and a rubric. Students will be more engaged and have the opportunity to be more creative if they can make connections with the material both in the classroom and through technology. This type of collaboration would allow me to build upon, explore and expand upon my learning in this course where I would practice and become confident in my abilities in information technology and or technology skills.
References:
Eagleton, M.B. & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading to the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Information Literacy: Evaluating Information. Baltimore: Author.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Screen Capture
Hi,
This was my first screen capture project and even though I enjoyed the process at times it could be frustrating to get it "just right." I hope to perfect this wonderful option to utilize it in the classroom as a tool for students who may miss some important content due to absence.
Check out my screen cast by following the link.
http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stUE5dSkZJRFtXRlxaWF5aVlRW/evaluating_a_web_source
This was my first screen capture project and even though I enjoyed the process at times it could be frustrating to get it "just right." I hope to perfect this wonderful option to utilize it in the classroom as a tool for students who may miss some important content due to absence.
Check out my screen cast by following the link.
http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stUE5dSkZJRFtXRlxaWF5aVlRW/evaluating_a_web_source
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