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You
are here: Harnessing the Best of Technology for an
Exceptional Information Literacy Library Program (Part 1)
by Deborah Gallaher and Sue Roberts
Technology is regarded as the big plum in education right now. Does the ability to play Doom, talk with friends by instant messaging, cut and paste together an essay, execute basic word processing or read a one-page superficial article off the Internet and call it "research" constitute real learning? As former teachers and now librarians we believe that the best education involves the problem-solving process. Students who can walk through a process using multiple resources to solve a problem (which can be a classroom assignment or a real life issue) are said to be information literate. They can figure out exactly what the problem is in the first place. They can access the necessary information efficiently and effectively. They can evaluate information critically and competently. And they can use that information accurately and creatively to meet their information need.
Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz fine-tuned the problem-solving process into a neat little package, which they call the Big6™. Swimmingly teachable, this is the format we use to nurture information literacy skills in our students at both the elementary and secondary levels. It requires collaboration with the classroom teacher, and is taught in the context of the classroom curriculum. Step one is recognizing that there is an information need; in other words, task definition. Step two is brainstorming the best resources to solve the information problem. Step three is the strategy necessary to locate and access the information. The fourth step is using the information: reading it, taking notes, listening, determining the best information for that particular need. Pulling it all together-synthesis-and presenting a product is the fifth step. This is where the real learning takes as students use what they already know in tandem with the information they just learned to create meaning for themselves. Evaluation of process and the product constitutes the final step. But nothing is really final in a process like this, which tends to look more like a spiral than a straight line. For example, step four-finding information-may result in a revision to step one, the actual research question, which results in altering step 3- you see what we mean. For this article we will exemplify the first 3 steps.
Technology is woven throughout this process. It is the tool students use to become information literate. We use technology to find the information, and we use technology to organize and word process the information. We often use technology to share the product with an audience by multimedia or a PowerPoint presentation. It is not an end in itself.
A commitment to blocks of time on a daily basis is necessary to carry out a successfully integrated unit. It cannot happen in the average 50-minute high school period, or the weekly visit to the library by elementary students. Librarians and teachers planning together, determining the content of the unit and how the Big6 will fit into the unit insures greater student involvement in an authentic task, higher ratio of teachers to students, and higher student achievement. Collaboration is doomed to failure if the students are rushed through the investigative process in the library, a common pitfall in our schools. In addition time needs to be allowed for assimilation and reflection.
We include the following examples of authentic assignments used in our library media programs in collaboration with our teachers and in the context of their classroom assignments. We will exemplify each step in the research process with an elementary scenario followed by an example from a high school information literacy unit.
STEP ONE: Define the Task
Elementary-Deborah Gallaher
Since questioning is the foundation of problem-solving, fifth grade students are asked to draw upon what they already know about Washington State native plants and their tribal uses. In a brainstorming session they also contribute ideas about what else they might want to learn. From there these learning questions are consolidated into recognizable large themes. Three or four big questions usually result, such as how did the indigenous people of Washington use plants for medicine and/or food? In addition to defining the problem, the students are told the expectation for the end product-a web page. The ability to formalize questions is really at the heart of the research cycle, especially as children begin to understand the process of developing questions. By the time my students reach fifth grade I want them to be self-directed instead of answering teacher-imposed queries.Secondary-Sue Roberts
At the high school level the objective of the physical education teacher is to have the students analyze and evaluate the impact of real-life influences on their health and fitness. Working in pairs to somehow balance librarian's need to honor the naturally social incentives to learning with the overwhelming need of the students to exercise their own agenda-talking with each other the entire period-the students have to come up with a topic on a sport or fitness interest and form a personally meaningful question about this topic. Called task definition, this is not as easy as it sounds. The question cannot have a yes or no answer, neither can it be too broad or too narrow. It must be of genuine interest to the students, the only way to create buy-in. Students interested in swimming might ask if Creatine, a legal performance enhancer, improves swimming. Another pair might want to find out how currently hyped sports bars and drinks affect performance and nutrition. Another common interest is the training heart rate. Each pair come up with their own individual question. It is not teacher-directed, which insures an active interest in an authentic assignment, and is the heart of independent learning.STEP TWO: Information Seeking Strategies
Elementary
In a large group students brainstorm all possible resources, electronic and print. Students share with their peers some of what they know about resources, which may include generic words such as the Internet, the teacher, the librarian or even the computer. Narrowing the scope of resources to a specific set is important since many of the print and electronic materials at the elementary level are packaged according to the teacher's vision, the reading level of students and their experience with information retrieval. As a group, we decide that the computer is important, but where exactly are we going to find information on the computer about native plants? Ideas generated by students include an online encyclopedia, websites related to ethnobotany and native plants, the school's online book catalog and the like. Our students use a web-based Big6™ matrix from the library's information literacy website to offer students a chance to look at each of the online resources. Embedded in the website are knowledge worksheets in MS Word or Adobe PDF formats for students to download, a citation builder, information links, a website evaluation exercise, and MS FrontPage student web templates, in addition to other online materials depending upon the needs of each teacher, grade level and degree of students' technological know-how.
Link to actual web page of the above
Equally important to the availability of resources is the ability to use them. This is where our elementary students develop their own personal tool kit of information searching skills by knowing things as rudimentary as the location of each letter of the alphabet in relation to the location of other letters. For example, if finding the physical placement of words or titles beginning with "m" is challenging, then students need to develop a concept of order in their minds by understanding the alphabet. Otherwise, children won't be able to make the cognitive jump from knowing the letters of the alphabet to applying its principle of order to multiple information seeking environments. Furthermore, our students need to understand numerical order to predict location and understand how to access specific text. Currently, they're learning that page ranges include pages x through y, and not simply two numbers with a dash in the middle. The Dewey Decimal Classification System is based on numerical order, requiring some schematic understanding of arrangement. My students know that the numbers on the spine labels refer to a particular subject and the material's location.
A successful search includes creating a bank of alternative term lists, so students work together in teams to brainstorm at least 4-5 synonymous words from their original search term. Strategies such as index searching, identifying chapters in the table of contents, recognizing subject headings and keywords are just a few of the components to successful and efficient searching and retrieval.
Secondary
High school students discuss with each other the best sources to use to close their information gap. The Internet? Parents? A nutritionist, the school nurse or a doctor? Documentary videos? An expert in the field? An athlete in a particular sport? Or, Oh my gosh, maybe even BOOKS? Now there's a novel idea. Novel, get it? They prioritize the best ways to seek information.The most important skill I teach as a secondary librarian helping students evaluate the sites they find for authority, accuracy, content, currency, and objectivity. Who wrote the site? Is he/she an expert in the field? How can you be sure the information is accurate? Is the content appropriate for what you are doing or is it too sophisticated? Might a book have provided better information? Scroll to the bottom of the page and see when it was written or last updated. Is currency even important for your purpose? Is the information written from an objective perspective? Should you use it if it is biased? I point out to them that a search on Creatine for our swimmers would turn up pages of commercial drug store hits. I ask them if they think commercial sites would tell them that a side effect of Creatine is abdominal cramps. No, they say. The drug store site is trying to sell the product. And that is how they learn the difference between using .com sites and .edu sites. I also tell them that government sites (.gov) are good sources because "We ALL know we can trust the government." Big moan from the students.
Honing in on sites specific enough to be useful is modeled by showing how different search engines default to different Boolean operators. We use the Venn diagram to demonstrate what will turn up using AND as opposed to OR (swimmers AND creatine, swimmers OR creatine). But how high school students search the Internet is another entire article itself.
STEP THREE: Locate and Access InformationElementary
Students use the information literacy matrix shown below to locate and access their native plant information.
Most of the electronic sources are linked from Step Three so students can easily access materials about the Nootka Rose or the Red Huckleberry. Since much of the electronic resources are selected by the teacher/librarian team, and uploaded to the website, students' search retrieval is more efficient and successful. Having had the enlightening experience of elementary students performing keyword searches on search engines, and wasting valuable time coming up with a lot of random or too sophisticated sites, I know that our information literacy block time is going to be better spent using their retrieval and search skills with my preselected materials, and the school's online book catalog.
At this step, I model the access strategies for every resource, including print encyclopedias. My students know where the information is, and how to get it. By fifth grade they know the Big6 and the information literacy process, and they're ready to be introduced to two new search strategies: Boolean searches and web site evaluation. Until then, I want them to have the foundation of skills and several iterations of research experience.
Secondary
Locating and accessing information is the next step. I model for my high school students a search of online subscription databases Proquest and CQ Researcher by projecting my searches on a large screen using an LCD projector. These are proven resources. However, it's not quite that easy to find quality sites on the Internet. Anyone can put anything on the Internet and make it look official. There is no cyber-editor. And students are not familiar with Boolean operators like AND or OR and tend to get thousands of hits of uneven reliability.Another use of technology is the OPAC (online public access catalog) to find books in the stacks. By this point in the problem-solving process students have had practice identifying exactly what it is they want to know, accessing the necessary information efficiently and effectively, and evaluating information critically and competently. The next step is helping them to use that information accurately and creatively to meet the information need.
Conclusion
How many students truly engage in the information from a textbook? As former teachers and current elementary and secondary librarians, we can unequivocally say, "Not many." The recent trend in education is project-based in which students use what they already know about a subject as scaffolding to build their learning upon. This is called constructivism. The best way to accomplish this is through a process of learning rather than memorization of facts as an end in itself. A student who is information literate can distinguish between verifiable facts and value claims; determine the reliability of a source; determine the factual accuracy of a statement; distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, claims or reasons; detect bias, and identify ambiguous claims or arguments. We teach these skills through the process outlined above.
In New Horizons' Spring Journal we will continue demonstrating the process by giving examples of how our students use the information they have accessed, how they synthesize it into some form of project, and how they evaluate their product and process. You'll probably find yourself using the six steps to solve your next problem. We do.
Deborah Gallaher has taught elementary school for 14 years, 7 of which as a school librarian. She has a passion for computer technology tempered with the talent to spin a good yarn. You may contact her at dmg10@u.washington.edu .
Sue Roberts is a veteran high school teacher who produced many high school plays before switching to become a librarian. She won one of five national iConnect awards for collaborating with a classroom teacher using technology. You may contact her at sar9@u.washington.edu.
Both Deb and Sue are graduate students in the University of Washington Information School.
Copyright © December 2002 New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.orgFor permission to redistribute, please go to:
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