I have started thinking about final project ideas and so far I keep coming back to the idea of teaching a lesson on information seeking strategies. It seems that a lot of people in my library world are talking about how students' information seeking skills are lacking. There are many reasons that students are struggling with the development of these skills. Some students just do not want to take the time to search for information, other students really don't know where to look (besides Google and Wikipedia of course). I would like to develop a lesson that shows them HOW and WHERE to look for information. I also think this needs to be done in a more creative way than just giving them a topic to find information on and having them regurgitate that information back to you. I want to stress the PROCESS and not so much the actual information. I have been going back and forth (with myself) on what I want this lesson to look like but I think talking to colleagues about it might give me some clarity.
I haven't figured out which age group I would like to gear this towards. Right now I am working with K-12 students so I can really apply this skill to any and all of my students. I am curious to see if anyone has thoughts on this lesson or would like to collaborate with me for the final project.
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I like your idea. I think it's vital that students learn how to look for information, and accurate information at that. I also think it's important for students to become familiar with various resources, such as Encyclopedia Americana, and other proprietary databases that are offered by public libraries. It sounds to me like you want to teach your students how to become independent searchers, so that they'll be able to know how to find information when they need to do research.
ReplyDeleteI think you are thinking along the lines of one of the readings this week, regarding inquiry-based learning. (http://questioning.org/mar05/essential.html)
I think you have a great idea for your final project. Since kids are growing up using Google and Wikipedia as their main research tools, I think it is important that we teach them not only how to evaluate websites but also introduce them to other sources (such as bibliographies) and teach them how to navigate and conduct research in other databases. I am currently taking an advance reference course and have learned so many new reference and research skills, something I wish I had learned while in school. I am learning how to search, analyse, and evaluate a wide range of sources, including databases. I only wish I had learned these skills when I was an undergraduate, it would have made my life so much easier.
ReplyDeleteThis too reminds me of a reference class project I completed. But I think it would be interesting to push your kids to look across some of the different mediums that we have been studying to find information and extend their understanding of their topic. This could include photos from the Flickr Commons project, editorial from blogs and other representative media like YouTube videos and Internet-based video games. I think impressing upon kids that there is more to research than databases would be a fun and interesting project, and asking them to compare and evaluate their findings against one another, a very enlightening one. Let me know what you think.
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