Open Letter

Dear EasyBib: Turnitin

I love you.  You make my life easier, and my students' lives easier. But You have a lot to learn about  21st Century searching!

I recently read a white paper from you entitled "The Sources in Student Writing."  In it, you state

"50% of matches lead to sites that are academically suspect, including cheat sites and paper mills,

shopping sites, and social and user-generated content (italics mine)."  A few paragraphs later, you included a chart, part of which showed  more specifically, the social sources you meant.

I didn't know whether to laugh or groan when I read this,  because it's so old school, privileging traditional sources and failing to recognize the dynamic shift in research sources and strategies "hip" librarians teach today. You see, we are all curators now, and search-savvy students recognize that and add social sharing sites to their personal search arsenal.

I was talking to a student today who is writing a paper about pollution in China and its effect on other countries.  He was having problems finding data, but did know the names of a few people studying the topic.  With his science teacher there, I told him:  Get on  Twitter and Technorati  or Google Blog Search to see if  your experts keep a blog or Twitter feed.  Follow them.    Comment on his posts or respond to his tweets.  Ask questions.  That's called primary source research. Or use this hashtag guide to search specific topics.

Then, dig through Scribd, Scoop,it and Slideshare.  Have they uploaded papers or presentations there?  Maybe they're on Diigo or Delicious--follow their bookmarks and read what they're reading.

Face it, EasyBib Turnitin. When even the MLA tells you how to cite a tweet, you know you've made it into the research Big Time!

 Of course students still need to be careful about authority, but that's true no matter what source they use.  The bigger picture, and the one your white paper didn't acknowledge, is  that authority no longer lies merely in books or databases. You can find it in blogs, on Facebook,  and certainly on Twitter.  Smart students create and follow their own PLNs, using a variety of tools  not only to expand their learning, but to bring it to them, rather than going out (or online) to find it.

And that's my beef with your article.  It didn't acknowledge that social sharing sites potentially great sources; it just lumped them together with Yahoo! Answers.

So pardon the rant, but, please--a little more nuance next time?

Sincerely,
Jeri Hurd
HS Teacher Librarian

UPDATE: Aack!  It was, indeed, from Turnitin, not Easybib.  See grovelling apology here.

The Research Planner, 2011 Style

I re-designed the Research Planner I use with the kids.  I'm torn on this--the older students tend to ignore it, to be honest.  Which is understandable, I suppose.  I mean, I know I don't sit down and plan out all of those when I am seriously searching.  Do any of you?  So how realistic are we really being in asking them to do this?

On the other hand, I already know all of this, and am able to "do it on the fly," as it were.  Maybe the whole point is to force encourage students to do it enough, that thinking about all of this becomes embedded in their practice.  I'm more insistent/persistent with the middle-schoolers about actually writing down book titles, etc.  With the older students it's more of a reminder:  "Hey, you need to think about this!"  

UPDATE:  It just occurred to me (in one of those "Duh!" kind of moments!), that I uploaded the PDF, which isn't editable, making it hard to change the databases section to reflect your own! If you want to edit the file, use PDF to Word to convert it. Or, if you're a Pages user, just leave your email address in the comments section, and I'll email you the document.

Research Planner

Content Curation and the Multi-Genre, Connected Search

 Hmm...I'm sure if I'd tried a bit harder, I could have loaded more buzz words into that title!

I've been thinking a lot about searching the past few weeks.  First, my DP students (grade 11) are just leaving the Pre-Search phase of their extended essays, and we're starting to talk about finding/managing sources.  I'm also putting together a presentation on Information Dashboards that I hope will be selected for the EARCOS conference this spring.

If you read Joyce or Buffy at all, or just about any other library blogger/site, you know that "Curation" is the buzz word du jour.  I pooh-poohed it for quite a while, thinking it was just a trendy name for what librarians (and researching students) have always done: collect sources and gather information.  Then I had my own little Eureka! moment: Collectors do just that: collect.  Curators, however, collect content as the initial stage in telling a story about the material collected (as in the best museums). In other words, curators put what they collect into context.

I'm trying to fit that new way of thinking about search into the kinds of skills and tools I teach the students.  I had a "take that" moment last Friday, when I asked a couple students if I could get screen shots of their Information Dashboards, Evernote collections, etc. for my presentation.  They looked a bit shame-faced, then admitted they hadn't really used them, it had just been "easier" to load everything into a Word document.  AARGGH!

I see that result partly as the nature of our workshops--I have to teach some of these things before the students are heavily into research, so I'm not there to reinforce using the skills/tools once they actually NEED them, and they fall back into old (bad?) habits. I need to address that problem directly with the students. Maybe give them time to brainstorm as a group just how they can use these tools productively.

More importantly, while I teach the tools and strategies, I don't think I've been teaching the "search mindset" epecially well.  Doug Johnson wrote a post today asking how professionals learn to search.  The thing is, aside from a few tricks in the "advanced search" feature such as narrowing domains, etc. I don't do anything that different from the rest of our faculty--or students-- though I think of myself as a reasonably good searcher.  What IS different is how I approach a search task, and knowing where to look for information, beyond "just Googling it."

In other words, searching today is multi-genre, and that's where curation, and curation tools, come in.

Gone are the days when I instructed students to "start with the books."  I still encourage them to use them, of course, but depending on their topic (and my somewhat slim collection), that's often NOT the best place to start.

So I've decided to revamp how I approach teaching search strategies this year.

1) It's Not About The Tools:  I'll start with the appropriate search attitude. I've glossed on this with them--the usual "don't give up if it's not in the first page of results" sort of thing--but I need a more specific list of what good searching behavior looks like.  More on this in later posts, but the point is, I need to emphasize this much more than I do.  Being a tech-geek, I have too much tendency to focus on the tools, and this is a big mistake:  the tools are changing faster than we can learn to use them.

2)  Sometimes, It Is About the Tools: I used to think it was important to limit students' exposure to tools--that part of my job was determining which the best ones were for their task, and sharing only those.  Now, I'm not so sure, and this brilliant blog post cemented my thinking. Money quote:

Every place they go, people will be using a flood of differing devices. Every place they work people will be Skyping, Twittering, Chatting, Texting, working together in Google Docs, translating, searching for information and data, and building social networks. If they are not learning the best ways to do all this, your school is a failure, because your students will lack essential knowledge and social skills. (Key: If you can walk into a classroom and see a bunch of kids doing the same thing in the same way on the same device, you still have a 19th Century school.)

Thus, while we still need to winnow the list of resources down--students don't need 20 different curation tools--I need to offer the older students at least a variety of options, allowing them to choose the tools that best fit their needs and learning style.

In the past, we created dashboards with either iGoogle (my favorite) or NetVibes, then documented their research in EverNote and BibMe.   Younger students use NoodleTools, but I wanted to wean them away from those subscription-based applications to apps they would available to them in the "real world."

In the Dashboard, their main page was personal, then they created tabs for their topics. I think I will still have them create a personal tab, and page in which to embed their paper (Google Docs), database feeds, etc.  but now they will have the option to collect their other sources in Scoop.It or LiveBinder.   I thought about Paper.li, but it looks like it only "plays" with Twitter and Facebook.  Or am I missing something?

3)  The Shifting Nature of Authority:  Ten years ago, would you ever have let a student cite a blog post in an academic paper?  Now, I not only encourage them to, I think I'm going to "require" it. As part of their research, I want students to follow at least one expert on their topic, through both his/her blog and Twitter feed.  I will also have them follow appropriate hashtags in Twitter for resources.  Basically, I want to instill the idea of connectedness and collaboration into their searching by asking them to create a PLN, and we will talk about that as part of their research strategy/attitude. 

This should also be a great point for discussing the shifting nature of authority in the digital world, and the increased need for triangulating information.  I also think we need to get away from the idea that bias is bad.  In the early days everything I read claimed the Web was bad because it was full of 'Opinion."  The horror! The horror!   It's more important to teach students to recognize opinion, acknowledge it as such, then determine where that opinion fits into the rest of their findings and their own learning.

5) Beyond Web Portals: I used to talk to students about starting with web portals and content-specific search engines. It's still good for them to know about those, but they're almost a Web 1.0 construct, aren't they?    In addition to searching Twitter,  and Del.icio.us, students should also be searching the very tools they're using--Scoop.It, Paper.li, LiveBinder and even Lib Guides for pre-curated content. They know to search YouTube and even Vimeo, but what about TeacherTube, iTunes U, Big Think, TED, Information Is Beautiful and similar sites that tend not to come up high in the Google results?   I think I'll create a list of site-specific links for them to include in their general search pattern.

4.  We will continue to use EverNote as the storehouse for their notes, final list of resources, etc.

I'm going to create a new set of slides and handouts for this, which I will post.

In the meantime, please add your own thoughts, ideas or suggestions in the comments. 

And here is the Scoop.It  I created on curation and tools, if you want to see what I've been reading.

Content Curation and the Research Story

I am late in jumping on the "curation" bandwagon.  I didn't get it, and thought it was just a trendy, jargon word for what librarians have always done.  Then I ran across a definition (which, unfortunately, I neither bookmarked, nor saved to de.licio.us,  Instapaper,  or Evernote, so cannot find now) that fomented one of those Eureka! moments for me.  Roughly paraphrased:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/umjanedoan/497411169/in/photostream

Collectors do just that: collect.  Curators, however, collect content as the initial stage in telling a story about the material collected (as in the best museums). In other words, curators put what they collect into context.

Wow! That resonated for me because, of course, that is what teachers ask students to do every time they assign a (well-designed!) research project.    And one of our most difficult jobs as information specialists is helping students not just make sense of their findings, but of fitting them into the larger context of the story they're trying to tell.  They may find a great YouTube video on the conflict in the Congo, but what does it add to their presentation on colonialism's aftermath? What nuance does it add to their thesis?  How does it relate to their other sources? Does it detract in any way and, if so, how do they account for it within the context of their overall point or "story"?

These are big, big questions.

Then I ran across this article this morning, describing journalism's own struggle with creating a coherent story from the plethora of info-babble and Twitter feeds.  If journalists--often our students' source--find this difficult, how much harder must it be for a 15-year-old? 

More importantly, how can we guide them in their story-telling without influencing their interpretations, or adding to what is already an over-whelming burden for many of them?


Students as Curators  

First, I think we need to explain their research to them in exactly these terms, including the museum analogy (or any other analogy you think will be relevant for them).    Students need to understand they are not just bookmarking ad nauseum, but trying to create a larger story.

Second, as students work with their sources, we should encourage (require?) them to jot down their ideas on  the source's relevance to their larger research "story."  Nothing as formal and time-consuming as an annotated bibliography, though I think those are a great way of a) forcing students to think more deeply about their source and b) ensuring they've actually read it, and aren't just including it to pad out their Works Cited  (Surely not!). 

While I would love to ask students to do these regularly, they are a lot of work, and I think there would be quite a bit of understandable push-back.  I'm a firm believer in choosing my battles!  It makes more sense to me to just ask them  to write quick ideas on their note-cards (real or digital).

Since many students don't have a clear idea of their thesis during the initial research stages, this would be an ongoing task, and their process in that (not the actual notes themselves) should be part of my assessment of their research.  Moreover, as they share their research notes with me, I would of course  nudge and guide their progress.  It's far more important to work with them during the process, than evaluate them after-the-fact!

Sensemaking: The Next Level of Search

I'll be in the air, en route from UlaanBaatar to JFK (hooray!), but details below for a June 21 webinar that sounds intriguing.  Register here.  If you can't attend, the archive will be posted here in a few days.

Title: Sensemaking: The next level of search skills

Sensemaking is what you do when you collect, organize and restructure information to come to some deeper understanding. In essence, it's the process we follow when we research complex historical topics... or when we're buying a refrigerator. I'll talk about ways that people do sensemaking, some best practices and how you can improve your sensemaking behavior.

Speaker: Daniel M. Russell, Ph.D.     Dan is a research scientist in Google's search quality product group. He has done extensive work over the past 15 years in understanding how people make sense of their complex data spaces. His web site (http://goo.gl/NERVh) has a good selection of readings on sensemaking topics.

Organizing Research: Tools for Participatory Learning

I may or may not have said that I'm teaching a 10th grade English class next year, in addition to running the library.  Aside from the fact that I do miss teaching English (though not the paper load!), I'm especially excited as I now have a built-in group on which to use all these tech tools I've been blogging about the past 5 years, without having to beg a teacher to "loan" me their class.

More importantly, it's the 10th graders.  We are an IB school, and 9th/10th graders spend a large part of those two years researching a personal project.  Obviously, I help with that, but it's been difficult to get their main advisor to give me the amount of time I think we need to spend on getting them organized and thinking about research in the right way.    And now I have them!

I'm fairly certain I can justify spending time helping them with their PP research as part of the English 10 curriculum--literacy is literacy, right?

We introduced the project to them (as 9th graders) about 6 weeks ago, but I only had two days with them, which we spent trying to set up their information dashboard on NetVibes.  Along with lots of tech glitches.  Of course.

Rather like Buffy Hamilton's Media 21 class, I  want to teach them to embed meaningful technology, create a PLN,  and to engage in participatory learning.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the tools.  Especially for us technophiles, it's all-too-easy to overwhelm students with the number of apps we ask them to use.  I also believe firmly in using real-life applications.  For example, while I have the 6-8's using NoodleTools in order to instill the idea of citations and notecards, I want to move the older students away from that to tools they can actually use on their own once they leave high school.

GATHERING INFO:

One of the students' biggest problems when researching is organizing their resources. They bookmark everything (which causes problems when they try to bookmark a database article), never tag, and it's a mess to try to find a specific article.  That's one reason I've never been a huge fan of using De.licio.us.    Enter the information dashboard.  Students use Netvibes or iGoogle (my favorite) to gather and organize their information. On both apps, thanks to tabs, they can create different pages on the same site.  I suggest the following:


HOME:   This is their landing page, and it should be both fun and functional for them.  I ask them to include links to the library website database page, our Google Apps account (with iGoogle, they can embed their actual document) a to-do list, InstaPaper, EverNote and Bibme.org.   They should also include note-taking and to-do list widgets.  After that, they can add whatever (appropriately!) takes their fancy to make the page their own.

I also ask them to find at least two experts who are blogging on their topic/issue, and include feeds for them, encouraging them to post comments/questions on the blog.

TABS: While I don't tell them what tabs to create--since each student has a different project, hence unique needs--we do talk about various ways to organize their information. As an example, imagine a project where a student wants to create a documentary about homelessness in Mongolia.  Students must not only research the topic, but also how to create the documentary.

They could organize their information by subject, with a tab each for homelessness, Mongolia, and effective documentary techniques.

Or they could organize by material type, with tabs for database articles, news feeds, videos, etc.  Most of our databases allow students to create RSS feeds of their searches, and they include those, too.

Or they could use some combination of the two.  The point is, students think seriously about what makes the most sense to their topic and their own learning style.

InstaPaper and EverNote

I wrestled quite a while with whether or not to have students use these.  After all, can't they just include links to articles or website on their dashboard?   The hard reality, however, is that students find so many text resources, it becomes somewhat cumbersome to keep adding them to their dashboard. Moreover, they don't always have time to read something right away, to see whether it's "dashboard worthy." Thus, we use the dashboard for feeds, large websites, videos, etc.  But InstaPaper and EverNote for articles and one page websites.

InstaPaper is a great place to store online text for later perusal.  Better yet, it does a great job of stripping all the extraneous (distracting!) material.  They can then share the articles they like with their EverNote account, which does a horrible job of saving webpages (it keeps a lot of the junk), but is much better than InstaPaper for organizing, tagging, etc.




 

10 Steps to Better Searching

SweetSearch just published the Power Point embedded below (aren't we past that yet??) geared towards educators that teaches search tips we media specialists already know.  It's downloadable, so might be useful for any faculty workshops that you do. 

I just gave my search workshop to teachers, and I really wish I'd done it differently.  Basically, I just focus on search strategies, showing them the same techniques I show students.  However, having watched a couple classes come in over the past month, where faculty didn't talk to me first (it's a slow and ongoing process, isn't it??), and just told students "Go look it up,"  I now wish I had changed my focus. 

Teach the steps, yes.  But I would add a heavy component of also talking about students and searching:  how just saying "go look on Google" isn't enough.  The SweetSearch presentation has a lot of information on teen search strategies that would help faculty understand a) why students need more instruction than just "look it up on Google," and b) why it's a good idea to collaborate with the library any time they want students searching.  I think I'll talk to my boss about using one of our faculty meetings to give THAT workshop to everyone, while simultaneously promoting the library!

However, this is also good information to share with students, because they THINK they know what they're doing, and they really don't.  With that in mind, I'm revamping my search lessons to not only add the above information, but also to include pre and post lesson assessments.  I will post those and the Search Prezi tomorrow or Thursday.

Teaching the Ten Steps to Better Web Research

View more presentations from SweetSearch.

Media Specialists As Hyprocrites, OR Can We Really Tame the Web?

OK, now that I have your attention....   :  )

I'm just commenting on a random thought that crossed my mind as I clicked on my Instapaper backlog, while looking through the 1000+ entries in my reader, after just telling someone yesterday how woefully behind I am on my YA reading, having now taken on the K-5 group, which means I have some serious catching up to do on my children's lit, on top of keeping up with the news.  And I haven't read my Twitter feed in weeks!

Yet there I was yesterday, blithely assuring a group of overwhelmed 10th graders embarking on the extensive researched needed for their MYP personal projects, that I would show them the tools that would allow them to manage it all.

Who am I kidding??!

And if I'm overwhelmed, it's no wonder that the students, once we convince them there is more to the information world than Google and Wikipedia, stand stunned by the sheer volume of what's available to them.  I used to try to show it "all" to them.  Once I'd explained databases and the OPAC, we would spend a few days on "the web."  We'd talk portals and search engines and advanced tools and browser add-ons and RSS feeds.

I don't know if any of it sank in.  I thought I was preparing them for the vast online world, but I now think less is more.  I need to tame myself, not the web.  I will now teach a core set of manageable tools and skills, saving broader/deeper instruction for a one-on-one as needed basis.  To wit:

1)  Basic search skills, obviously.  Keywords, Boolean (at least the concept), quotation marks,  narrowing domains.  A few of the Google options, such as the wonder wheel.

2)  Specific portals, two or three depending on research focus.

3)  Two or three specific search engines, such as Google Books, Intute,  and Infomine.  I'm actually not all that fussed about Google Scholar, and tend to mention it in passing, then talk about why it's not very useful, unless you're at a big univesity.  Specifically, much of the content is behind a pay wall.

4)  Evernote, NoodleTools and Bibme.org.  I'm a recent NoodleTools convert.  I never used to like it because I thought their citation tool was FAR too lengthy and cumbersome.  With wonderful tools like BibMe available, why should students go through that process, if even I wouldn't?   They now have a shortened MLA version, however.  So I'm trying it this year (mostly for the note cards options), and will survey students for their response to it.

I also used to show them iCyte  (which I will use instead of EverNote for middle-schoolers) and Diigo, in the belief that it's good to have options.  Now I think it just confuses them.  I really love Diigo, I might add, but it relies too heavily on good tagging for its organizational structure.  Students still need folders.

I'm still teaching the same content, I'm just increasingly convinced a large part of our technology job is to assess, winnow, and present the most useful options--much like developing a collection.

Information Literacy: Assessment

TRAILS (Tools for Real Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) announced updated versions of their grades 6 and 9 assessments, and brand new assessments for grades 3 and 12.

TRAILS offers both general and category specific assessments, such as topic development, identifying sources, etc. which are good tools for both pre and post instruction data-gathering to demonstrate the efficacy of your library program.

Another  way to assess skills (and I completely stole this from librarian extroardinaire, Michelle Luhtala) is to create your own assessment using Google Forms.  This has some distinct advantages:
     1) You can personalize the test to your curriculum/students.
     2)  The answers feed to a sortable spreadsheet, for easy analysis.
     3)  If you add a "Do you feel confident, or would you like more help?" question, it is then easy to identify and help students who need further guidance.

I confess, I have not done much (read: anything) with assessment before this, but I plan to start this year.

I am about to start working with 10 and 11th graders as they prepare for their individual IB projects/extended essays; I'm going to create a pre-assessment quiz for both, and I'll post it here when I'm done.

I'm Back...

Greetings from Mongolia!  It's been a rougher start than I anticipated, emotionally speaking.  I was definitely on overload the first few weeks; but now that school has started, and the familiar routines are in place (school is school, wherever you are), I'm settling, getting a routine going, and figuring out where to buy those little things like, you know.....FOOD!

Anyway, I am in the process of getting the library set up, getting policies in place, etc.  This involves of lot of rethinking of the program I set up at my old school, upgrading things that worked,  revamping (or dropping) things that didn't.

I've done a couple mindmaps of the library website in specific, and the library program in general. Add your thoughts for anything I may have left out! Notice the one on the library program has nothing on literacy yet. I'm still thinking about what I want to do with that. I will update it in a few days.

What a Surprise: Schools Need to Teach Information Literacy

via @BlueSkunkBlog

I don't know whether to groan or cheer.  David Pogue interviewed John Palfrey, author of Born Digital.
 Take home quote

 I think almost no emphasis is being put on giving kids the skills that they need to sort credible from noncredible information. Schools have to wake up and have to give those skills to our kids. It’s the critical thinking skill of the 21st century that they’re going to need, sorting credible from not credible information. And I think we’re asleep at the switch.

Stop Tilting at Windmills: Finding Dulcinea

In a rather convoluted series of attention-destroying hyper-clicks, I stumbled across Finding Dulcinea this morning, whose "mission is to bring users the best information on the Web for any topic, employing human insight and methodical review."

A beautifully designed website, they offer a collection of useful resources, such as detailed webguides on everything from searching to carpal tunnel syndrome, dedicated search engines,  featured articles, and an excellent series of "On This Day" articles that look beyond the headlines.

For libraries, their series of search engines, Sweet Search, provides access to pre-vetted, age-appropriate sites. The site can be added to your Firefox browser, and includes different versions:

SweetSearch4me: a search engine for young users
SweetSearch for School Librarians:  Searches for content to help teach information literacy
Sweet Sites:  Content by subject and grade level
Sweet Biographies:  Biographical profiles of over 1,000 people
Sweet Search for Social Studies:  Finds their "best social studies content."

A great source for students, teachers and librarians.

How do I know they find good content?  They linked to me, even if they did think I'm a guy... (I confess, it was an ego search that led me to them!)

Another Reason to Kill the Textbook Industry: Part II

I blogged awhile back about why curriculum decisions made by the Texas Board of Education were another reason to kill the textbook industry.

Here's one more.  In this day of online access to a plethora of online resources, both primary and secondary, it boggles my mind that we still promote the use of generic, unimaginative, I'd-rather-chew-broken-glass-than-read-another-page-of-this textbooks. But then, we have a multi-million dollar industry to support, don't we, and well-entrenched interests with access to Congress and the president who want to ensure their market.

Enter Arne Duncan and the Race to the Top, glowingly reported on by the NY Times with the reductionist headline: Teacher's Unions' Last Stand.  Now we know!  Our educational woes are all the fault of the teachers' unions, which stand in the way of true progress in favor of job security while protecting teachers with sub-par performance.

As Duncan states, "It's all about the teachers"  (as if students play no part in their education), and he paints of vision of higher pay for qualified teachers and...here's the crux...increased testing.
For states to win RTTT funds,  points

would be allocated based on the quality of a state’s “data systems” for tracking student performance in all grades--which is a euphemism for the kind of full bore testing regime that makes many parents and children cringe but that reformers argue is necessary for any serious attempt to track not only student progress but also teacher effectiveness.

As NCLB has amply demonstrated, when high-stakes testing determines financial outcomes, people retreat to the trenches and drill, baby, drill. And textbooks are perfect for that.

The problem with everything I've seen proposed by the government is it only reinforces current definitions of education, placing the focus on the teacher (Duncan's quote above) on the relaying of information to passive receivers.  If only it were that easy.

Never mind the practical consideration of where in the world the country will find 3.5 million Jaime Escalantes, if that's what we need to solve the problem.  Why are we again placing the emphasis on the teacher, instead of firmly on student-centered education, where it belongs? Why are we failing to acknowledge and utilize the paradigm shift created by our current technology?

If teaching doesn't move beyond  "sage on the stage" methodology, we are a doomed profession. That may have been fine in an era of limited access to information, but not in an age when I can carry the entire internet in my pocket. I even read somewhere that smartphones will eventually kill laptops...and we're still seating students in straight little rows in confined classrooms....and teaching out of textbooks.

Our jobs are not so much about content now, though that's certainly part of it. They're about teaching students to be effective learners, with whatever that means for our respective disciplines. We need to guide them towards meaningful ways of gathering, analyzing, and evaluating resources (the "self directed text construction" I blogged about a few days ago), then teach them to use technology constructively to reshape that information into personally meaningful outcomes.

And that's why Arne Duncan is wrong; it's NOT about the teachers. It's about empowering and motivating students to take charge of their own learning.  I would love to think I'm as gifted a teacher as Jaime Escalante, but I don't kid myself.  I'm a good teacher, though, and there are thousands of us out there, engaging students in real world problems and issues for which there are no immediate answers; yet we encourage them to ask the right questions and ponder possible solutions, with the whole world as their resource.

You don't need a classroom for that--or at least not a physical one. And you certainly don't need textbooks.  Moreover, while that kind of learning can be tested, it's not reducible to multiple choice responses.  I believe in testing and accountability, but only if the tests measure something meaningful. Knowing whether a given word acts as a gerund or a participle in a sentence is NOT meaningful.

Promoting this kind of learning isn't easy.  My next post will focus on the iPad, the promised software upgrade, and how it could well be on its way to becoming a useful tool for students to engage meaninfully with information sources.

UPDATE:  BTW, if you're not following Bridging Differences at Education Week, add it to your reader immediately.  The blog is an ongoing conversation between Diane Ravitch (and hasn't SHE turned around her views?) and Deborah Meier.  Ravitch had a telling quotation from a recent post:

I think the Race to the Top is a massive waste of money that will produce perverse consequences. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of schools will be privatized, handed over in some cases to incompetent or unscrupulous organizations. Teachers will be pushed to focus more of their energy on unworthy tests. Many schools will discover there is less time to teach the arts or sciences or foreign languages or history.

A big question I have yet to hear answered:  The top of what?  How are we defining the top?  Is there any consensus on what we mean by that?  If not, how do we assess whether students are there? Or the best means for getting them there?  People's jobs are riding on this.  We better be clear what we mean.

BP, Google and a Timely Search Lesson

So, I often have a hard time convincing students that Google results aren't always the most reliable, due to their algorithm and the effects of popularity, etc.  They understand in theory, but don't really get how it could affect their research.

Well, here's a bit of new for you.  BP has bought up several phrases relating to the oil spill on popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  Search for "oil spill," and you get over 34 million hits, but the top one takes you to the BP Gulf of Mexico response site.  Very unbiased, I'm sure.

Now, fortunately it's labeled as a sponsored site, and I know (or hope!) we're all talking to our students about what that means.  Here's a great teachable moment on a highly relevant and current issue.

I know it's the end of the year, but if you are still in school for a few more days or weeks, it would be well worth the time to have your students search for information on the oil spill, and point out the BP result.  Some questions to consider:

1)  What is a sponsored result?  Why would a company such as BP want to spend the money to do this, since the site isn't actually selling anything directly?

2)  What questions should you be asking as you look at the content?  What bias might the information have?  How can you tell?  Can you find any information that takes a negative look at BP on the site?  What information might be left out?

3)  Where can you look for more objective information?  On these objectives sites, is there information that eithercontradicts what you found on the BP site, or gives a more complete look at the situation?

Old Literacy/New Literacy

There's a debate going on in educational circles that I think is profoundly important for the future of education in general and libraries in specific.  "21st Century Skills" reigns as the current buzz word of choice to the point it has become somewhat meaningless.  What do we mean by that?  NETS standards?  Critical thinking?  Technology?  All of the above?

Critics claim it's the latest education fad. They argue it's actually just a re-packaging of old 20th Century skills long recognized by Bloom:  analyzing, synthesizing, creating. And I do believe they have a point. Many of the "new literacies" we promote are touted as methods for engaging students more deeply with content.  Don't write an essay, the thinking goes, produce a documentary!  The tools are different, but by creating a real project for a real audience, students finally engage with all those analytical modes we've been trying to get them to for so long.  Or that's the theory.

Anyone who has ever had a class produce documentaries knows they can be every bit as weak and brain dead as an essay.  That usually happens when the focus is on the tool rather than the learning...but that's another blog post!

My point here is that many of the nay-sayers miss a fundamental difference in how students are choosing to learn these days. Quite bluntly, literacy is changing.  Like it or not, the internet is transforming how we read, how we process, how we study.  I'm 52 and long entrenched in novels, and even I can see a difference in my reading habits.  It's more of an effort to read a book these days, I must admit.  And not just because I need reading glasses now.  Once I'm into it, it I'm fine, but I feel a definite cognitive shift in that first chapter or so.

Doug Johnson wrote an interesting post the other day describing post-literacy reading habits and how libraries must change to meet the needs of students who increasingly choose to work and think in modalities other than writing or reading. Most tellingly (for me), he argues:

...postliteracy is a return to more natural forms of multi-sensory communication - speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization. It is just now that these modes can be captured and stored digitally as easily as writing. Information, emotion and persuasion may be even more powerfully conveyed in multi-media formats.

While there is a plethora of literature about "new literacies," I have found very little that actually defines what that means.  The University of Connecticut is one exception, and I was lucky enough to sit in on a conference call with Greg McVerry, the Neag Fellow at UConn's New Literacies research lab.

As he pointed out, the dilemma isn't a tech issue, it's a literacy issue.  Students come to any given learning experience with something of a "textbook mentality"--they expect to find their "answer" specifically stated somewhere in the text, with everything titled and subtitled for easy skimming.  I certainly see that in my own students;  if they can't find a sentence directly addressing their topic (usually in the first 10 minutes), they give up and declare "I can't find anything!"

We're in a new age, however.  Rather than texts, or even libraries, where books are edited and chosen for content, students Google the web in a sort of "self directed text construction"  (Greg's term--isn't it great?). Students themselves act as editors (ideally), and while the topic may be the same, by researching online, each student constructs a different text as they read different links.

They start bogging down, however, with the sheer amount of information available to them. Remember the old days when you had to have "two books and a magazine article" for your research paper? Students now have access to thousands of sources. Moreover, in addition to the authority problem we all try to teach them, they now have another issue:  how do I synthesize the information I've learned from multiple texts  and put my own spin on it?

That is the consistent problem I see students struggle with--they're surrounded with stacks of information, but don't know how to organize and reshape it into something meaningful for their paper.  Worse, they are often side-tracked into non-relevant issues by the plethora of links leading from any given page.

For me, 21st Century Skills are only nominally about technology.  As a profession, we must come to grips not only with teaching students to find and manage information, but also teaching them to synthesize it,  to make it their own, whether they're writing an essay or producing an Animoto presentation. While good teachers have  always pushed for that in student work, the sheer variety of information available to students now--textual, visual, auditory and mash-ups of all three--make it not just a nice perk from the academically inclined, but a necessity for ALL students.

Yet we consistently take them to the point where they start putting it all together---then just give them a due date and say "have at it."  Like the Sidney Harris cartoon, we expect the miracle to happen, and, disappointed, grade them down when it doesn't. We would be better teachers, produce more successful students,  if we were "more explicit...in step two."

How we do that, I don't know, but let's start the conversation.  It's certainly something I'm going to think heavily about this year.  Any sudden insights, and I'll certainly post them!

So much for data-driven decisions...

With all the hoopla in educational circles these days about data-driven teaching, the current decimation of library positions flabbergasts me. Study after study drives home the need for trained school librarians and their impact on improved test scores, yet district by district, and state by state, schools are slashing library positions, replacing professionals with untrained aids or eliminating positions altogether.

TO visualize the devastation, Shonda Brisco created a Google map of districs where librarians are either fired or on notice: blue push pins represent eliminated positions, red push-pins are warnings. Brisco encourages everyone to participate, but as Joyce Valenza notes, we need to document not only the eliminated positions, but also--dare I say--the inevitable drop in scores and skills.


View A Nation Without School Librarians in a larger map

Here in Connecticut, out of 27 districts reporting, eleven projected cuts of certified librarians--that's on top cuts in previous years. They also project a cut in part-time and aide hours equivalent to six full time positions. This at a time when the very nature of information and information literacy is changing.

Particularly disturbing, many of the project cuts stem from poor districts, widening the education gap for at-risk students even further.

Librarians, while great at promoting reading, are not great at promoting themselves. We need to reverse this trend now. Spread the word; write articles for your local paper, lobby your members of congress. Most librarians know by now of the outrageous omission of libraries from Obama's educational drive, despite past speeches promoting their importance. We need to educate the public and the parents, sparking more grass-roots protests like the one in Spokane, Washington.

Let the rebellion begin!

Kudos to the NYT

The NYT published an article last weekend on Google's latest research on kids lack of coherent search strategies. Nowhere in the article did they mention libraries and/or librarians. I was irked. So I sent off a letter to the Times, and darned if they didn't print it.

Probably the only way I'll ever be in it! : )

Research, the Internet, Barabasi and...Robert Frost

According to a recent Boston Globe article research at the University of Chicago claims the internet is having a narrowing effect on...well...research.

In brief, databases, search engines, etc. all algorithmically favor recent articles over older, established (or obscure) texts, leading to a smaller range of sources and a "tightening of consensus."

There are those, of course, who disagree, and I look forward to watching the debate. Though,if nothing else, Laszlo-Barabasi describes the phenomenon in his excellent book, Linked.
While, theoretically, the internet makes everything available, in actuality it creates 'hubs' that attract the majority of links, based on popularity, leaving other sites stranded in oblivion, buried in the 11+ billion pages that make up the web.

If he doesn't mind me paraphrasing him, Doug Johnson wrote that he's not sure what the findings mean--it could be the idea of "sufficiency" has worked its way up the academic ladder.

I also wonder if that "breadth" that supposedly existed earlier wasn't a function of lack of access to a broad selection of current resources forcing scholars resort to the tried and true of what was already available. Along the same line, before the days of search engines, one really had to dig to find information. I remember spending HOURS poring through the Reader's Guide just to find a few articles that our library MIGHT have. Looking at everything else along the way might have led to some serendipitous finds. Online searching with its wealth of results make that serendipity less likely.

One of the comments mentioned a new search engine Sere.ndipito.us that tries to build in the "Eureka!" factor. I wasn't that impressed. It seems to limit results to only 10 or so. On my first search "French revlution" the results were exactly the same as Google's. (they display results side-by-side)

The next search for Basset Hound yielded different results and did, I must say, lead me to some

cool cartoons

Google didn't bring up. Other results were rather bizarre, though.

In the meantime, the kids will continue to do what I suspect kids have always done--find a few resources and think they're finished, while I nag and badger them to dig deeper.

Google Celebrates

In honor of its 10th birthday, Google released its search engine a la 2001 (the oldest available.) This would be a fun information literacy exercise for students: search the current browser and compare with the historical browser. How do results differ? How do the websites and what's now available differ?

Here We Go Again...

The media is suddenly intensely interested in the effect of the internet on reading skills. Last month, the Atlantic published Is Google Making Us Stupid? while today the NY Times ran a lengthy article entitled Online, R U Really Reading?


Anytime I read one of these articles, I picture of bunch of Medieval monks fretting over the printing press and bemoaning the inevitable loss of memory skills it will bring about.

To its credit, I found the Times article pretty balanced. Studies do show (and my personal experiences verifies) that online reading is vastly different from reading, say, Crime and Punishment. It promotes shorter attention span, jumping from text to text and idea to idea rather than deep sustained thought.

Yet many of the naysayers refuse to recognize the benefits of online reading: the immediacy, the ability to read multiple and varied opinions in a short amount of time, covering a breadth of material not possible in more traditional formats. If the reader has enough time and interest, depth need not be short-changed.

I've well documented in my early blog posts the profound experience my reading had on me last summer as I explored Web 2.0 technologies, almost solely online through blog postings and RSS feeds.

I am greatly troubled, however, by a comment towards the end of the article. Despite repeated studies showing students vast ignorance when it comes to thoughtful analysis of their online reading. Despite the 61% of students who failed to achieve competency levels on ETS new iSkills test (measuring information literacy), we still get bone-headed statements like this:

Some simply argue that reading on the Internet is not something that needs to be tested — or taught.

“Nobody has taught a single kid to text message,” said Carol Jago of the National Council of Teachers of English and a member of the testing guidelines committee. “Kids are smart. When they want to do something, schools don’t have to get involved.”

Oh, really.

Never mind the logical fallacy in comparing text messaging to reading, in what alternative universe does this woman live that students don't need to be taught critical thinking skills? Reading online may be a different kind of thought from sustained reading, but it requires thought nonetheless. In fact, one could argue it requires MORE analysis, as students must learn to distinguish between credible and non-credible sources, which is more difficult online than in printed text.

This comment (from an English teacher, no less) reaffirms an observation I've made over the past few months: my job involves training the adults every bit as much it involves training the students. Maybe more so, as teachers determine the amount of time I'm allowed in working with the classes. If they don't see a need, I don't see the students.

If you get a chance, take a look at the article and read some of the comments. It's an education in itself.

Photo Credits:

'Sustained Silent Reading'. Uploaded to Flickr Creative Commons
by vsqz on 19 Mar 06, 2.21AM PDT.