Reading Review: Part C

Face it, they are going to use Google.


I've forced World Book. They complained. They did it anyway. Some liked it. Some didn't. Once on their own again? Back on Google.

I've peddled EBSCO. Some liked it. Most didn't. Many were confused. Many missed the pictures. Long lumps of text are boring (okay, not always, but when they're about Antartica, often.).

Google it. Google map that. You've heard it. You've done it. So do they.

I find myself wondering, how can we Google better? How can we teach students to navigate this world that they will insist on entering, again and again?

And then there was Wikipedia.

Confession: For the past seven years, I have been a closet Wikipedia junkie. Oh, some one asks, what was that Margret Atwood novel, Oryx and What? How many books has she written, anyways?

Where do I find myself trolling for answers? You guessed it. On Family Literacy Day I read aloud from Elephant and Piggie. Opps, I needed some quick info on Mo Willems. Once again, I'm back in the world of the big W (Wikipedia and Willems, I suppose).

Wikipedia is just so comprehensive and so organized. I find information at my fingertips, why not use it?

Brain Break! Watch Mo Willems in Action

These are some of the issues I found myself coming up against as I faced the challenge of teaching students to research better. Looking back, I think I've always felt as if I needed to provide some Holy Grail websites and places to search. Everyone knew about Google, pshaw, my cat uses Google. What could I, learned teacher librarian, bring to the table? I see now it's not so much a matter of donning my sage hat and feather but rather directing students how to better do what they're already doing. How can we learn more skills so differenciate, more places to organize our information. Really, looking at Aaron's example is a great place to start. (Going for some serious ooey gooey brownie points here) I've taken a number of online courses through UBC. Many instructors use the blackboard platform to deliver courses in a similar format to what they might deliver in a classroom. On entering Aaron's classroom, we see a different use of blackboard. Aaron is using the opportunity to let us explore as he provides support, suggestions and examples. I'm acutally enjoying the course! For the record, I don't typically like online courses regardless of the content because I miss the face-to-face and get really lazy about reading long chunks of text in the modules and then more long chunks of text in the articles and then more long chunks of text in the textbooks. I am encountering diversity in this course as I'm given licence to explore. I'm hoping that I might be able to do my students a similar service.

What I have found in these first forays into exploration has been impactful. I wanted to tag every article that I came across, and I tagged many more than I shared, but I ended up listing a total of 5 for the purposes of the course. The resources that proved to be of most interest, where those that provided guidance around the topic of research skills. These included practical advice, as well as musings on the topics of effective searching, analyzing webpages, and organizing online resources using tools such as mind maps and bookmark tools.

As I skimmed through a number of resources in the initial search phase, I noted that older articles tended to be more mistrustful, and focused on creating frameworks. The more recent work seemed to open up the idea of research and focused more on enabling students to use popular sites and engines. The conversations seem to be more around how do we dig for what's there (as opposed to fear what's there). Also, how do we evaluate what we find? Finally, how do we organize this wealth?

Regardless, I was astonded by the wealth of information regarding popular resources. The articles I selected validated many popular search engines. In fact, Debbie Abilock herelded Wikipedia as "arguably the most important source of objective information on the web." I was also introduced to a number of new search engines such as: Similar Site Search, Duck Duck Go, SpyFu... to name a few. In addition to our class text, I've begun reading The Socially Networked Classrom, by William Kist. The text includes a lot of pratical application advise. It is certainly sparking ideas for me as I read around how to use use networking to open up student learning.

I suppose the next phase in my learning is application. I need to get my hands dirty with some of these ideas and see what might be crafted as a result.

My resources  can be found over....here.

Oh, and here's a fun map...