Reference skills through Inquiry ~Navigating digital and print materials
This unit has been very relevant to my current role as a
teacher- Librarian. I connected with
some of the concepts such as inquiry skills and reference skill and had similar
questions as posted in the course content and readings about digital resources
versus print materials as well as concerns about price and evaluating how
useful the materials are on my situation.
I have found reference skills so important for students have
yet sometimes very difficult to teach. I often don’t have time in my library
program to spend a lot of time on these skills with students. However I have
found it help during collaboration to teach reference skills through working on
inquiry/passion projects with a class. This is a great opportunity to teach a
skill and have them practice the skill in meaningful way to them by using that
skill to research their passion. Many of the students are eager to do their
research on the Internet, and some must use digital sources, as their questions
cannot be answered using the book in our collection. Luckily our district
subscribes to online resources, and I encourage the students to use Infotopia
before Google and learn 360 before youtube. I try to teach them how those sites
have already pre filtered some information for them and they don’t need to
filter as much as using a regular search. Yet the temptation for Google is
still there and strong. Our last module talked about digital verus print
materials….I conference with the students as to which would be better for their
research. Yet, I still find a problem with digital materials is they can often
look up their question and find a direct answer (maybe not super creditable)
this it takes away from the sorting and synthesizing we want students to
practice. To combat this the classroom
teacher and I approve their question first and try to tweak so the students
need to offer their own opinions.
This is the sheet I use to try and encourage questions that require synthesizing and sorting of information:
I love sites like wonderopolis…… yet when students have the same questions as the site, some tend to just copy it, despite the request for multiple sources. I like this graphic that explains to kids how to sort information:
The digital world is so big so it nice when we have the opportunity to guide students using it, as it is not going anywhere.
References:
http://www.brandonrossen.com- An infographic is
http://www.caringforyoungminds.ca/resources/navigating-the-system-toronto/
http://wonderopolis.org
This is the sheet I use to try and encourage questions that require synthesizing and sorting of information:
I love sites like wonderopolis…… yet when students have the same questions as the site, some tend to just copy it, despite the request for multiple sources. I like this graphic that explains to kids how to sort information:
The digital world is so big so it nice when we have the opportunity to guide students using it, as it is not going anywhere.
References:
http://www.brandonrossen.com- An infographic is
http://www.caringforyoungminds.ca/resources/navigating-the-system-toronto/
http://wonderopolis.org
A decent start to the blogging part of our course with some good reflection on your current practices and how they are improved with insight and new learning from our course. Some interesting examples and discussion of the challenges we are facing and how resources can be implemented and utilized to support reference research. A few more links, examples and MLA/APA formatted References would be an improvement.
ReplyDeleteAmanda:
ReplyDeleteSome interesting stuff here for sure! Thanks for the link to wonderopolis - I have not seen it before and will add it my toolkit for reference resources.
Great meta-infographic!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Amanda, for sharing Wonderopolis. Before today I had never actually taken the time to go and check it out fully. I knew it had a great reputation; now I see why.
It's a delightfully fun inquiry site.
I can see how it would be a problem if a kid came up with an inquiry question that led to a top search result on Wonderopolis—YIKES! Research complete in one click—since the info on the Qs I looked at was quite thorough.
I suppose if Wonderopolis was a close-to-exact match, we could make a game out of not going to the page yet, then doing research through other sources, then coming back to it as a compare and contrast evaluation...that could be interesting.
Oh that is good idea to make a game out of it.... about not going to page and see how they do with the research. I like it! Thanks for the idea!
ReplyDeleteAmanda,
ReplyDeleteI appreciated your point about information skills being so important for students to have yet they can be difficult to teach. I have been working on a number of lessons that help students know where to start in finding the information they want. Library orientation skills that I am hoping will transfer over when they are doing their own research so that they can take back some power back and not be helpless. It certainly helps to be able to pair up with the class teacher to reinforce research strategies.
I hadn't heard of infotopia, but will gove it a go. I have used other web searches such as Webpath Express through Destiny that uses preselected websites for research. I like that the reading level can be changed within it and there are various types of media included such as videos, quizzes etc..