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CATEGORY: Information Literacy, Research Strategies |
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In this age of easy access to Google, standardized testing, and AP curriculums, why should we teach research skills? Don't students "know everything" about research and the web? Hardly! Carolyn Foote has a lot to say about this, and even more about why teaching research skills counts for even more today than in the past. What we're striving for, she says, is student empowerment.
From the mechanics of writing and grammar to style and research, the Writer's Reference Center online covers the fundamentals of quality writing and provides vocabulary-building reference dictionaries.
News/Breaking News - Posted 20 Jan 2010
A 9-year-old girl is poised on the surface of the moon, a spaceship and stars in the background. Her fellow voyager, in the form of an orange, cylindrically shaped robot, responds to her conversation with an unintelligible mechanized beep. These two space pioneers are engaged in a lively discourse about the nature and origin of constellations. Is it a Nickelodeon special? The latest remix of Lost in Space? A juvenile version of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Nope. Just business as usual as an elementary school class Johanna Riddle reports on produces another Pawprint Production educational video.
As a kid, Mary Ann used to collect insects, setting the critters into their respective boxes and tagging them by laboriously printing information on little slips of paper. Apparently the process of classifying appealed to her deeply, and ultimately lead to … what else? … this month's discussion of tags, folksonomies, and tagging as a participatory sport and useful intellectual activity.
Collaboration is one of the defining characteristics of the 21st century, but many educators are still searching for ways to embrace this idea in their schools. Some technologies facilitate the creation of a collaborative learning environment better than others, but there are a number of technology tools that can lead to collaborative student and teacher engagement while also addressing budgetary and infrastructure issues. This article offers suggestions for overcoming barriers using simple tools that foster complex thinking.
From a scan of ResourceShelf listing in early August, we pick up on The K-12 Web Archiving Program, from the Library of Congress.
News/Cool Links - Posted 10 Aug 2009
The postings on the Inside Google Book Search blog, usually by folks from the Google Books Online team, are thoughtful, sometimes provocative, often featuring multiple media, and, of course, full of news about new features brought online at Google Books. They're very busy folks, so it's worth keeping up with them.
News/Cool Links - Posted 18 Jun 2009
It's the hot new ... what shall we call it? Search engine. No. Information tool? Maybe. How about "finding tool?" It's Wolfram Alpha. And as it's being written about by those in the information and search business, phrases like Web 3.0 and semantic search are coming into play. Woody Evans has written about it for Information Today. (From Information Today, Inc.’s NewsBreaks.)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 22 May 2009
Google has just implemented some great Search Options on its site ... and blogged about it at the Official Google Blog. Read the posting (and watch the demo video) to see what's what ... and cool.
News/Cool Links - Posted 13 May 2009
When he read the recent New York Times article “In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update,” featuring strategies of New York City school librarian Stephanie Rosalia, Stephen was moved this month to list a number of tricky web sites like the one that she uses to teach her kids information evaluation skills. Check out his list. It’ll make you laugh, or cry, or laugh ‘til you cry … but the sites comprise an eminently useful educational tool.
Newsy.com's short video stories are actually digests of the range of news outlet reporting—print, TV, blogs … the whole gamut—on selected hot news topics. Theresa Cramer has written an Information Today NewsBreak on Newsy.com that offers a description and some interesting analysis of this company and its product. (From Information Today, Inc.’s NewsBreaks.)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 27 Apr 2009
"How to Do Research" offers online tutorials to better equip both students and educators with 21st century information literacy skills.
News/Breaking News - Posted 17 Apr 2009
There’s a sea change in how people around the world receive their news. Among other things, surveys show a strong increase in the role of internet news. When we think about our learners’ and our communities’ ability to receive and filter news on a local, national, and international scale, are we preparing them with the skills they need? Are we preparing our learners for the world that they will inevitably encounter? Stephen Abram weighs in on these questions in this month’s Pipeline.
Searcher magazine editor Barbara Quint has another K-12-relevant NewsBreak we’d like to direct you to. She’s reported the news on ProQuest’s eLibrary interface in a January 15, 2009 story over at infotoday.com.
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 15 Jan 2009
All right, it’s not news to you that the role of school libraries is changing in the 21st century, but it’s nice to know that there are stories about this fact in the general press that reach the general public—your students’ parents. Here’s a link to one such story.
News/Cool Links - Posted 07 Jan 2009
Mary Ann is on a mission to spread the word that Draconian filtering at schools is a practice that produces negative outcomes. So in this issue’s Belltones, she lays out more reasons for saying this is so ... and she challenges readers to make a New Year’s resolution to work for gaining more internet access for students and faculty members in K–12 schools.
From using Twitter to encourage short story writing to utilizing Delicious to organize professional development tips and favorite articles, the number of social networking tools and websites is increasing exponentially. We know educators use these 21st-century tools with students in all grade levels. The question remains, however, whether and how these tools might be used to positively affect student understanding and achievement. "Yes," says ePals' Tim DiScipio, "these tools, when chosen thoughtfully, implemented appropriately, and combined with innovative pedagogy through internet-connected communities, can teach students the skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century and expand their ability to communicate and collaborate in a global marketplace." Read on, learn more!
Just when you thought you understood how to fully integrate internet learning into your curriculum, along comes Web 2.0, the “social side” of the internet where people can communicate with others and contribute their own content. As a librarian you should be able to communicate with students, parents, and teachers the issues that they face when placing materials on Web 2.0 social networks, and one of the big ones is copyright. This article looks at several situations in which library users may use popular social networking sites and confront copyright laws.
In this article, Aline Soules discusses some current options for media specialists who want to adopt elearning tools and makes some suggestions about how to keep up … because, as she notes, "the pointers that will help you today will be old hat tomorrow and obsolete the day after."
The purpose of the World Book/ALA Information Literacy Goal Award is to encourage innovative and effective information literacy programs in schools as well as public libraries, particularly programs focused on users who are likely to need the most help to obtain access to information, in print or digital form, and to evaluate the quality of the information available to them.
News/Breaking News - Posted 20 Feb 2008
As you can tell, this article in Slate online has little good to say about Yahoo's answer service. It's a good read!
News/Cool Links - Posted 07 Jan 2008
These days, students are inundated by information in all formats and from all corners of the world, and they are apt to believe what they see, hear, or read without carefully evaluating it. At her school, Debra Gniewek and her colleagues frequently review website evaluation strategies with students and even have some “quick and dirty” methods to help them develop information evaluation skills. Still, they find the students are sometimes too trusting of the information they find on the World Wide Web. To address the problem, they created a unit in which the students study urban legends, which has proven useful in helping them look at information with a more critical eye. The students are genuinely drawn to this modern folklore, one that illustrates the most profound fears of society.
RSS allows you to keep up with just about anything that you want to on the web. If you want to stay focused on the latest blog posts on the effect of global warming, RSS can help. If you just want to be updated whenever The New York Times publishes its latest book review, RSS can help. And, if you want to know when the next Dave Barry column appears, RSS can help. The greatest part of RSS is that it can do all of this in one place, without your needing to parade all over the web looking for the new content. RSS is a continuously updated customized online newspaper, and it can not only help you in locating new information (in fact, the content comes to you, not vice versa), but it can help you do it in a quarter of the time.
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) launched its first Digital Institute, “Minding Your Students’ Future,” as part of the AASL e-Academy online offerings.
News/Breaking News - Posted 05 Nov 2007
There are many ways to teach information literacy—the formal classroom way, library visits, team and project-based methods, and more. No matter how you define “reference work” today, it likely involves the process of accessing print and electronic sources, understanding a variety of containers from books and videos to Web sites and serials, understanding how to ask questions of people in person and virtually through search engines … as well as questions of ourselves. It’s more than just a research skill. True information literacy has emerged as one of the defining life skills of our century. Building citizens who can learn and inform themselves throughout their lives in a new century of predictable massive change is the Holy Grail of our era.
AASL hopes that these standards will provide a foundation for a strong library media program in every school, where students will research expertly, think critically, problem-solve well, read enthusiastically, and use information ethically.
News/Breaking News - Posted 26 Oct 2007
Some of the questions addressed by the kit are as follows: What should Media education be like? Who should provide it? How should it be included in a curriculum? Beyond schools, do families have a say in the matter?
News/Free Resources - Posted 10 Oct 2007
The contest challenges students to find trustworthy information online.
News/Breaking News - Posted 09 Aug 2007
It is essential, says Stephen Abram, that we teach information literacy skills to our learners—and today, the younger the better. We are already getting good at teaching how to select great sources, directories, and indexes; full-text searching skills; advanced and introductory modes; and the evaluation of quality. We’re getting better at warning our learners about the bad guys—the four horsemen of gambling, sex, stalkers, and racists—plus other bad guys in black hats. What do we need to focus on next? Stephen's column this month concerns some of the stuff he says we need to teach but are less comfortable with, mostly because it doesn’t involve information so much as manipulation--advertising literacy and media literacy in the Web environment.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a few images can constitute a persuasive argument. Consider the impact of propaganda posters, of billboards, and of photojournalism. Creators of visual images leverage visual art principles to convey messages. In order to convince the viewer of a specific idea, mass media producers who understand the language and connotations of visual literacy can manipulate images to elicit desired responses—a strategy that is used increasingly with the advent of digital tools. Particularly in this electronic age, students need to know and apply technological visual principles and skills to become critical visual consumers and producers.
The new netTrekker channel provides educators and students with three pathways to find resources that support the core elements of 21st century skills.
News/Breaking News - Posted 27 Jun 2007
The comprehensive professional development conference for media educators will take place June 22-26 in St. Louis, offering over 75 workshops, panels, and peer networking opportunities, as well as presentations by media literacy experts from the United States, England, Canada, Australia, China, and Japan.
News/Breaking News - Posted 11 Jun 2007
Sarah Cooper teaches at an independent school where a new library is being built. “Once this facility opens in September 2007, we want our students and teachers to use it as an intellectual hub for innovative research projects,” she writes. In this article, she describes the successful methods and tactics she and her team are using to make sure this happens.
Traditionally, we have defined literacy as the ability to read and write. However, 21st-century literacy has moved beyond that into the realm of possessing the critical-thinking skills necessary to delve into information or data and figure out what it really means. Students need the ability to synthesize and evaluate data and to create new information and knowledge after they have determined its quality. To prepare our students to be informed, successful citizens, we must teach them to see beyond numbers and simple functions. They must have the skills to evaluate and analyze the data put before them. In other words, they must also be data-literate. Dr. Glenda Gunter offers strategies for building data literacy and a great deal more in her article.
ResourceShelf editors point to the new Pew report in this ResourceShelf listing AND add an article full of interesting and thoughtful reactions, insights, and musings about it.
News/Cool Links - Posted 25 Apr 2007
The iSkills assessment is a simulation-based test designed to measure information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, that is, a student’s ability to navigate, critically evaluate, and communicate information using digital technology, communication tools and networks.
News/Breaking News - Posted 18 Apr 2007
This is the first in SafeSchools’ Online Safety Series, which covers the various means of communication as well as the growing dangers that can entrap students when they’re online, including cyberbullying, predators, and threats of violence.
News/Breaking News - Posted 19 Jan 2007
On October 11, Google very quietly launched Google for Educators, a site that pulls together access to and, in a sense, annotates a whole bunch of Google features, tools, and resources in a way that will make them easier for educators to find, understand, and use for teaching purposes. Read all about it!
News/Breaking News - Posted 12 Oct 2006
TRAILS (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) is a federally funded project to create a tool for library media specialists and teachers to assess the information literacy skills of their high school students.
News/Free Resources - Posted 22 Sep 2006
Created through a partnership between two universities in the U.K., the tutorial offers practical advice on evaluating the quality of Web sites and highlights the need for care when selecting online information sources to inform academic work.
News/Free Resources - Posted 21 Jun 2006
The Core level of the test is designed for high school seniors and first-year students at community colleges and four-year institutions. Until May 5, first test administration is free for qualifying colleges and high schools.
News/Breaking News - Posted 14 Apr 2006
The new version is designed to enhance administrative and end-user settings for the Personal, School, Family, and Enterprise editions of TurboTools.
News/Breaking News - Posted 06 Mar 2006
Over at Barbara Quint’s Searcher magazine,
information professional Paula Berinstein has written an article that delves
deeply into both these products … who uses them, who writes for them, what
they’re trying to be, how their articles are produced, their reliability, and
more. (From Information Today, Inc.’s Searcher magazine)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 03 Mar 2006
New MMIS columnist Mary Ann Bell introduces herself in her inaugural Belltones column and discusses some of her interests and plans for upcoming columns, including information ethics, technology use in schools, the principles of AASL's Infomation Power, information access, and more.
Stephen Abram writes in this month's Pipeline, "While we may be seeing some learner resistance to traditional writing and creation activities, maybe we can increase their engagement in learning good writing, editing, and information literacy competencies by aligning some of the projects with a Web-based option." Among the options he discusses are social networking, blogs, wikis, and photo sharing.
Many students experience "library anxiety" when making the switch from high school to college. While school librarians do an excellent job teaching information literacy skills to their students, they may find themselves asking, "What other skills are important for my students to learn before they leave high school, and what resources are available for them?" Having worked for years as a librarian and with librarians in school and academic settings, the authors offer solid advice and ideas for school librarians to help students bridge the gap between the high school library and academic libraries.
In her newly published book Super Searchers Go to School, Joyce Kasman Valenza interviews a dozen prominent K–12 educators and educator-librarians who share their strategies for helping students become effective, lifelong information users. In this excerpt, Joyce elicits wisdom that points the way toward a successful future for K–12 libraries from Ken Haycock, whose impressive professional experience includes being a school librarian; principal; school board president; president of the American Association of School Librarians; and, currently, director of the school of library and information science at San Jose State University.
How can teachers help students develop visual literacy skills that complement and deepen phonemic literacy? How can teachers help students develop critical thinking skills so they can analyze, reflect upon, evaluate, and make inferences from the images they see and not be the passive recipients of visual information? The answer in part is for teachers themselves to develop the conceptual, instructional, and technical skills so that they feel comfortable incorporating visual learning into traditional learning. Mary Burns' article discusses a series of professional development activities that can help.
The National Television Academy, the organization behind the Emmy Awards, is offering free online curriculum materials designed to educate high school students about best practices in journalism.
News/Free Resources - Posted 19 Dec 2005
For November 1, 2005: Explore Newton’s Castle, a “stimulating journey into the revelations of Sir Isaac Newton,” where you can learn about his discoveries … and secret life! Learn about color, optical illusions, and lots more ... such as why dogs chase cars! (Did they have cars in Newton's day??)
Cyberbee Web Pick/Cyberbee's Web Picks - Posted 01 Nov 2005
By
Linda C. Joseph
Databases can inspire novel approaches to creating curriculum. As teachers become familiar with them, their thinking about lesson planning and student research often moves in innovative directions. In this article, Sarah Cooper describes five projects through which librarians can take the lead in helping history and English teachers see the potential of this new world of sources. Included is coverage of database resources from Accessible Archives, Country Watch, EBSCO, Gale, JSTOR, LexisNexis, NewsBank, The OED Online, and ProQuest.
S.O.S. for Information Literacy is a dynamic, multimedia, Web-based, and freely accessible resource for K-8 library media specialists and classroom teachers that promises to make a significant contribution to enhancing the teaching of information literacy skills worldwide, according to the project organizers.
News/Free Resources - Posted 12 Oct 2005
The AMLA’s Web site offers “a basic set of media literacy activities and suggestions … for educators who want to help students analyze, understand, and cope with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.”
News/Free Resources - Posted 07 Sep 2005
Information Today, Inc. News Bureau Chief Paula Hane has written about a new anti-plagiarism tool from LexisNexis and iParadigm, CopyGuard. (From Information Today, Inc.’s NewsBreaks)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 31 Aug 2005
TurboTools is the foundation of a Big6 information literacy program for your school and provides an effective way to implement and teach information and technology literacy, according to the announcement.
News/Breaking News - Posted 28 Jul 2005
Project SMARTArt was created to integrate two principal tenets of media literacy – critical analysis and self-expression – into traditional curricula, according to Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy.
News/Free Resources - Posted 03 Jun 2005
Since Google wants to “organize the world’s information,” the company is working toward making book content searchable and available from its new Google Print Web site. Learn about it, then try it out in beta.
News/Cool Links - Posted 01 Jun 2005
ONLINE magazine columnist Greg Notess has taken a sophisticated and up-to-date look at new, free full-text search choices offered by your favorite search and book sites … search choices that enable you to get inside e-books, and not just those in the public domain.
(From Information Today, Inc.’s ONLINE magazine.)
News/ITI Cross Links - Posted 04 May 2005
Recognize the need for information to solve problems and develop ideas; pose important questions; use a variety of information gathering strategies and research processes; locate relvant and appropriate information ... These are some information literacy benchmarks listed by the Canadian Association of School Libraries. "Seems simple enough ... But what does it really mean in grade 1? grade 3? grade 9?" asks Stephen Abram as he re-examines this all-important topic for educators in general and librarians in particular in light of 21st century realities.
On NPR’s Morning Edition is a story on students’ ability, or lack of ability, in the areas of information and computer literacy, sparked by the fact that ETS is piloting an assessment test for those skills.
News/Cool Links - Posted 26 Apr 2005
Online journal provider Project Muse is offering high school libraries its full collection for $1,000 per year.
News/Breaking News - Posted 25 Apr 2005
News/Breaking News - Posted 14 Mar 2005
The free Internet, subscription databases, and e-books make information available outside of physical library walls, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With the proliferation of information in electronic format, virtual school libraries must be entities of the present, not the future. We must provide access to quality resources and instruction in how to use them, virtually! Learn more and discover virtual school libraries that represent Best Practices in the field in Audrey Church's article.
News/Cool Links - Posted 24 Feb 2005
News/Breaking News - Posted 23 Feb 2005
Pinpoint is a Web-based research utility tool for K-12 schools and libraries. The product allows users to simultaneously research school library resources, subscriptions, and Internet sites and harvest age-appropriate annotated resource lists.
There is a method to locate and textually or graphically display links to sites that amplify the content of a useful Web site. The method can also be employed to assist in verifying the credibility of a Web resource and as a very effective search technique.
As the Web continues to develop and faster Internet access becomes available to more individuals, the likelihood of Web-based programs replacing CD-ROMs is becoming more and more real. The advantages provided by subscription Web-based services will lead them to be used for direct instructional purposes in the classroom.
Technological advances have provided new opportunities and greater power to support the teachers' endeavors and have simplified the process of collecting and using data to help them make informed decisions about their increasingly thinning resources, to better collaborate on what works, and, ultimately, to help all children learn.
We believe that ongoing reading promotion through our school media's technology program goes a long way toward supporting reading.
What makes the biggest difference in improving student performance? It's not the latest curriculum product or assessment tool or even parental involvement. Research indicates that it is precisely what the average citizen already knows: teachers and the quality of teaching.
Everyone is beginning to drown in information. Offer them a life preserver and they just might take you up on it. The satisfaction you'll gain in seeing all your library's information technology and resources finally being heavily and effectively used will only be matched by the resulting improvements in student learning you'll witness!
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