Module+4+--+Research+and+Information+Fluency

NETS Addressed

Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.

Students: a. plan strategies to guide inquiry. b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media. c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. d. process data and report results.  Social Bookmarking  I created a user account on the website [|Diigo], though I found it to be not-so user friendly. It does seem to be a more convenient way of keeping bookmarks and websites together, but navigating could be an issue.  Thoughts on Website Evaluation  I've actually seen [|this particular example] before, and I have a former science teacher / friend's father who loves to do this to confuse people (renaming common items with ridiculous scientific names) so it didn't quite strike me the same as others, but... students still need to understand how to pick this apart and understand what is good and what is not.

I found the following website to help in addition to the standard "5 Ws". [|Evaluation Checklist]

Going off of this example checklist, there's plenty to find wrong with the DHMO website. First, it's not particularly clear who the author is. "The Coalition to Ban DHMO" only links back to their own web site with no other information. There is no contact information to speak of, no credentials, nothing. They quote the Washington State Dept. of Health, but there's no link to the actual quote, just the main site.

This doesn't even bring up the fact that there are advertisements all through the site, usually not something that respected resources would use. The website is from 50megs, no .edu, .gov or the like. All in all, as a reasonable person who grew up with the early internet, I picked up on this quickly. However, for all the credit we give students regarding technological resources, I am not sure how many would notice this. In fact, I am ABSOLUTELY using this as a resource next year when we do research. I'm interested to see how many fall for it.

Lastly, if anyone bothered to check the "additional reading", those do not exist. Furthermore, the animated skulls and crossbones strike me as completely unprofessional if this were a real site. Still, it's an interesting case study to use to see how students will react. <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="color: #ff00ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Talking to the Librarian <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Well, I finally managed to get through to our librarian (she had been away for a week plus), and wouldn't you know, most of what we discussed were things that I had already thought of...

As far as resources that we have readily available in the high school, the students can use the OPAC card catalog on the computers to find books in the library. It certainly beats the traditional card catalog in a lot of ways and I'm not sure if students would even know what to do with the old-style card catalogs anyway.

Furthermore, with regard to books, we do utilize the Power Library system along with AccessPA which allows students to borrow books from other libraries and schools across the state. I have had students in the past who checked out books in this manner, though I'm not sure how much they actually read of said books.

Periodicals are a little tougher because once we get past the physical hard copy backlogs that Cindy keeps in the library, there isn't necessarily an easy way to access local newspapers like the Bradford Era or Olean Times-Herald. For that matter, those are basically the only two newspapers we get in (the Port Allegany Argus could hardly be argued to be a newspaper, in my opinion). Now, journals and magazine articles are available through various channels in Power Library, and this year was the first time I had students actually searching through journal articles for research projects. That probably had something to do with the fact that I taught Advanced 9th for the first time this year instead of 7/8, but I'll take it.

Beyond these, there aren't many more that students on my level will practically use. Looking at others' responses, we also have AR levels on the books, but personally, I stay away from them if only because it is so easy to guess blindly at the AR tests, but that's another topic for another day.

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