Internet @ 25: Prime of its' life or problems brewing?

The Internet is arguably about the most revolutionary tool invented (or which has evolved) in our lifetime.  At 25,  humans are no longer a fledgling, but ready to fly.  Is the Internet ready to fly?  Or, die...as we know it? 

Your students could examine the Infographic below, and use the essential questions to conduct a short term research assignment and build an evidence-based-claim.    The CCSS challenges instruction to spawn thinkers.  What better opportunity do we have than examining the information beast that our Millennials love? They might be surprised to find out people like me spent $3000.00  in 1980's  to purchase an IBM  XT with a 10 MG hard drive (which was not even connected to the Internet yet).  That's less than 30% of a flash drive which sells for about $20.00 now, and we carry that in our pocket.  

Essential Questions such as:

• Will you define the Internet, or be defined by it? 
• How has the Internet changed our society for the good or bad? 
• How will the future be impacted by further development of the Internet? 
• Is the Internet our friend or foe?  

will help your students think critically about a tool they use ubiquitously.  

Carpe Diem! -- Let us think! 

Will testing terminate the silo-hugger syndrome?

We all know teachers teach-to-the-test.  In case you haven't heard:  25% of the Smarter Balance assessments, and 30% of the PARCC assessments will be a simulated research task.  If you examine the PARCC frameworks, you will see that they recommend at least a 1-2 week research task, followed by other shorter research tasks.    Well, if their curriculum framework recommends research, it makes total sense to "assess" (i.e. test) this.  So, why are teachers surprised?    

Now, let me share that I am NOT a test proponent -- In fact, I abhor standardized tests and believe we should move to performance based assessment and student portfolios. However, if it is a test that points out to teachers why they should be coming to the library...then let it be a test that wakes those silo-huggers up.  Glory be.   

This week, I received this email:

       Hi Paige,

       A third grade teacher brought me the following question off of a practice  

       assessment out of a Common Core crosswalk book and asked me to verify the     

       answer.

            The author who wrote this passage found the

            information by typing Alexander Graham Bell

            into a search field.  This type of electronic

            text feature is

A.    a hyperlink.

B.     an icon.

C.     a group of keywords.

D.    an electronic menu.

       I thought this was interesting, another piece of why we need school librarians.

Karen  (Name redacted) 

Salem School Librarian K-12

Salem Central School 

Here is the FRAMEWORK language from the 7th grade PARCC for research: 

Research Project

Each module includes the opportunity for students to produce one extended project that uses research to address a significant topic, problem, or issue. This entails gathering and synthesizing relevant information from several additional literary or informational texts in various media or formats on a particular topic or question drawn from one or more texts from the module. Students are expected at this stage to have performed research that assesses the accuracy of sources and uses a standard citation format to acknowledge the conclusions of others. Students can present their findings in a variety of informal and more formal argumentative or explanatory contexts, either in writing or orally. (Research aligned with the standards could take one to two weeks of instruction.) Ongoing incorporation of research for shorter tasks should also be a regular component of instruction. 

 

Image from 7th grade Research Tasks search  - PARCC 

The Common Core Does Not Say "Fetch"

This week I heard from librarians across America that they are discouraged by students showing up at their door with low-budget-research "packets."  We don't send kids down to the Home and Careers classroom and say, "I want to send my kids down to bake a cake, and here is the recipe I want them to use."  Or, we don't send our students to gym class and say, "I would like my kids to get physically fit and here are the exercises they should do."   So let's encourage teachers to plan with their information specialist.

If you are an administrator reading this blog, I would recommend a litmus test for "research" endeavors in your building.  If research is merely fact-finding, the project should be "repackaged" with the librarian using an Inquiry framework. 

• The Common Core calls for students to move beyond the compilation of factoids to build and share knowledge. 
• The new C3 SS Standards encourage students to operate within an "Arc of Inquiry."
• The new C3 SS Standards encourage lessons to launch with a "compelling question."  We often call that the Essential Question or "research question."  Something that has to be uncovered and discovered -- not "covered" or found on Google.

Here's a Crazy Talk video clip created by a secondary student who did his homework for a research project that was filled with "transfer." This exemplifies how you can turn information fact finding into knowledge-analysis and synthesis. The compelling curriculum content for this could be....Imperialism? Movers and Shakers? Biographies? Colonists?  

Question: Where would you Imperialist fall today, if he were living among us now? 
Or, 
EQ: What would the founding fathers, patriots, and other American hero from the past, say to America today?

This knowledge product displays an understanding of TR, who he was, his impact, and a compare and contrast analysis. It wasn't just a venture for facts. (Even though this is a couple of years old, it reflects synthesis -- what we want to see in our students.)  

This is one example of using technology to embrace higher level thought and analysis.  We have seen this used for animals at the elementary level talking to America about their habitat, difficulties, and challenges in life; for Explorers discussing how their adventures impacted the world; for Signers of the Declaration talking about why they chose to stand with independence; and at the HS level this has been used for Chemical discoveries and properties, animating inanimate elements advocating for reactions, fusions and transformation.  Biography units have also been transformed into advice for teenagers: What would your person say to teens today?  

The important Bloom's component is to move beyond fact-finding to synthesis.  Make your students "interpret" the facts. -- please.    Here are some important things to consider for synthesis:

• How can your students use these facts to "understand" the "moral of the story" -- the main point?
• How did these facts change [society]
• Do I see any patterns? 
• Do I see any similarities - can I group these facts somehow?
• Is there a cause and effect? 
• Which facts are the most important?  Group your facts from important to least important, and ask why.
• Which facts support the answer to our Essential [research] Question? 

This Teddy clip was originally posted in 2009, but is more relevant now that every educator is being challenged by the Common Core Standards to create engaging research units that require kids to think, analyze, quote, draw upon evidence, argue, synthesize, and create knowledge products that are proof that they have embraced the vocabulary of the discipline and seen the relevance of the content to their lives.

The applications are endless!                http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/ 

(It was in my AASL  eCollaborate course that librarians from the Virgin Islands to Virginia were lamenting low level research, despite the demands of the CCSS.  Instructional time is too valuable to waste on tasks that will not teach the students anything.) 

Information Overload: TMI

The plethora of educational acronyms now includes a new one: TMI--too much information.  We are no longer living in the Information Age, but are now living in the age of misinformation.  My son remarked, "did you know that 80% of statistics are made up on the spot?"  And I replied..."Like that one?"


I believe the impetus behind the Common Core focus on information, problem solving, and writing from the text, comes from the need to separate belief, hearsay, and opinion from truth, fact, and foundational knowledge.  Not only to students need to know how to speak and write with authority, but they need to be able to place credence behind their claims. 


This generation has grown up watching detective shows, Judge Judy, reading crime novels (check out the Grisham YA book on featuring kid lawyer Theodore Boone) and crime scene serials that have disgusting content far beyond imagination.  As a result, students may have trouble discerning truth from error.  They have Too Much misinformation in their brains.  


   David Coleman says, "CCSS calls for rigor," and rigor is not Google.  

In her book, Web of Deception, Anne Mintz likens our students to Internet Nomads wandering aimlessly or naively, on the Internet only to find misinformation.  [http://books.google.com/books/about/Web_of_deception.html?id=uS3p9iDooc8C] 
Anne goes on to paint a picture of a world of misinformation from Journalism to Education.  This book alone should justify the need for librarians and information literacy instruction.  The Misinformation Age is documented in this book, with "content farms" being exposed as credible spammers spawned to make money.  This book is freely readable on GoogleBooks.


Common Core Takeaway: 
More importantly, I firmly believe that the crafters of the CCSS, knew that this MISINFORMATON AGE is the environment in which the next generation will have to function. Perhaps that is why they need to cite their source, speak with conviction, draw evidence form the text, persuade with statistics and write reliable, credible, papers that are backed up with facts.  We are living in a data-driven society and they will need to learn how to do more than "tweet" and update their status.   Let's prepare them! 

Google, Garbage, and Research Alternatives

Here is a piece of a Slideshare presentation for the Searching 101 for Educators I'm holding in our area. I realize that PPT without the "comments" is lacking in understanding the message, but for information professionals, you might get a few ideas for when you deliver the same content.  
    
Although Google is the biggest gauntlet for information on the face of the Earth, it is not the only source out there.  In fact, there are wonderful alternatives.   If you are an educator and haven't heard this message, see your librarian for some alternatives.  Chances are they can make your students "smart searchers" as well as provide databases for research which save time. 


Information professionals can encourage teachers to:

• Use databases as an alternative to web searching
• Teach kids that we live in the age of misinformation--not the Information Age. The MO has moved from "you can't believe everything you read,"  to "Don't believe everything you read."  This subtle nuance captures our misinformation world.
• package your research endeavors to "solve real world problems"  rather than "find information" = Inquiry based learning.  

An enlightening activity is to sign into Google, then view your own history:  www.google.com/history   - They have mine back to 2008, on the calendar you can view your "heavy" days buy the intensity of the color blue.   If you are not signed into a Google Account, it will not archive your data.  Therefore at school, your searches shouldn't be "captured."   As soon as all this PD is over, I'll erase my history, but for now...I need the example.

Google and garbage-- lsta 2012

View more PowerPoint from Paige Jaeger

Whistleblowers and Winterwonderlands

As I listen to the Polar Express train blow past my backyard, I can't help think that we Americans love a good story.   The Polar Express is growing into one of those timeless tales about which this younger generation will reminisce.   Why else would a family of five pay  $100.00 to ride a train in their PJ's  with make-believe elves, just to wave to Santa?  It's not for the toys--its' for the memory. 


So it should be with our schools.  I hope that this generation will hold fast to a few memories of good teachers.  Or, will they just say, "Oh she was so great...she prepared me for the test...it was so painful."  I would call that the polar express.  Freeze the brain and hurry the pain.


The Common Core (CC) has stated in their anchor standards that they want to see teachers cover less and dig deeper.  We call that-- uncover and discover.  In the library world, we are loving the CC focus on rich text.  This is a librarians wonderland.  We are totally able to provide these texts that teachers need to dig up to enrich their classroom pedagogy. 


I have previously posted a guide to Lexiles and the CC, but this embedding of rich text is taking the recipe and enjoying the content.   As you find great articles of rich text, correctly Lexiled for use in the classroom, please take a moment to consider how research and Inquiry Based Learning can be a companion activity to reading a document.  For students to just "read" a document, there is no application or transfer of ownership and relevancy.   When you ask the students to "do something" with the content of a rich text document, then you have the formula for student-centered learning activities.  Here's the recipe:

• Find a wonderful reading article in a database. 
• Check the Lexile via a database notation or on Lexile.com (Lexile Analyzer)
• Identify core content, rich words that enhance the reading experience
• Brainstorm an Inquiry based question to foster research and additional digging.
• Create a lesson plan(s) which will encourage the asking of questions, digging for info, synthesizing of facts--> knowledge, and the creation or formation of new knowledge. 

This week, the middle school librarian at Hudson Falls shared that she and a history teacher did this with their students.  The article which was read was a piece on the Salem Witch Trials.  After reading, examining, discussion and debate, the class was asked,"Where else in history, or today, have there been witch trials?"  


A wonderful inquiry project ensued with collaborative working models examining historical events such s the Holocaust, "mean girls,"  Sri Lanka witch hunts,  the Trail of Tears and more.  This was a wonderful way of examining whether "history repeats itself."  This could go on and dig deeper.  The class could hold trials for the events.  They could discuss the Bill of Rights and why these things shouldn't occur in America.  They could embrace mathematical learning objectives and create graphs and infographics.   The possibilities are endless. 


So,  use your databases, your creative brain, your marketing skills, and create wonderful, correctly-lexiled rich text lessons aligned with the vision of the Common Core.  That would melt away the disbelief and warm the CC creator's hearts.   Let those students express themselves and share their knowledge.  Give them something to get excited about--rather than prep for the test. 

Helen Keller's letter to Alexander Graham Bell
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?magbell:25:./temp/~ammem_bFU0::

This primary source letter from the AmericanMemory.gov collection, is a letter sent to Mr. Bell.   In the research endeavor that follows this letter, students discover and uncover secrets critical to the invention of the telephone (such as Mr. Bell was married to a deaf person and his mother was deaf.  It was in his research to assist deafness that he invented the phone). The inquiry question could follow... How does promise come from adversity?   Now, that's an educational wonderland.

Educational Makeover Contest - bring us your "packets"!

Bloom, Socrates, Gardner, Vygotsky , Hunter &  = Danielson APPR
As I sat in an APPR seminar today, I couldn't help but observe that some of the basic precepts, or learning platforms of the past, are being resurrected as mandates. Blooms taxonomy wasn't mentioned once, yet teaching methods which foster the same objectives were cited, modeled, and encouraged.  Blooms has been re-packaged in the Common Core.  The difference?  The CCSS are content, but the appendix, accompanying documents, and paradigm shifts cited all foster the top tier synthesis that Bloom's held up in its' pinnacle point. 

With the parameters of RTTT to include teacher observation (APPR) come an onslaught of training for administrators on the Danielson model of teacher evaluation.  Most are familiar with the Four Domains of Danielson: Planning And Prep; Classroom Environment; Instruction; Professional Responsibilities.  I found it interesting that a tool originally planned to foster great instruction, was not really intended to be a tool for evaluation--no less reduced to a cumulative point system in NYS.  However, the result should actually work to encourage good teachers to become great. 

Bring us your "packets"
In the evaluation rubric were performance indicators which drew from the best of yesterday's educational experts.  This is the perfect storm, synthesizing the premises of educational experts. This could very well be the change our students need to improve our current "stand and deliver" model.   Librarians have been proponents of higher level research projects for years, but have often had a hard time getting people to jump aboard the Inquiry model.  Now teachers are being told; "students should research, draw evidence from the text, draw conclusions, digest rigorous text, discuss with experts, evaluate, and present increasingly complex information, ideas, collaborate with their peers, create knowledge products that reflect deep understanding and more." (see http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/key-points-in-english-language-arts) This is the mode of learning in which librarians excel.  We encourage people to bring us their bogus research  "packets" so we can "repackage" them for higher level thought.   We challenge you to bring us those "worksheets"!  Give me a curriculum goal, and I can repackage it in a question that students will have to research, examine, digest, synthesize, conclude, and create to answer.   (Global footprints= Paper or plastic?  Support your decision with evidence from reliable sources, citing experts, give me data, and create an infomercial to inform the public.)

Educational Makeover?
If you are looking for great collaboration in your cybrary, or library, give the teachers a challenge:  Bring me your packet and I will redesign a common core aligned assignment that will be student-centered, have assessment imbedded, and will increase student engagement and achievement.  See how many teachers offer you a worksheet for an educational makeover.  With all the pressure of APPR and the Common Core, they might just welcome your suggestions.  Share an makeover model @ a faculty meeting so people can see the possibilities!  
Find inquiry lesson links at this site, if you don't know where to begin: http://www.wswheboces.org/SSS.cfm?subpage=419

Bekko in Beta is the Bomb

Beta Blekko is gathering attention from the high-end smarter searchers. 'not sure Granny would bring it up and render the slash tags as interesting as we informationistas, but this product is worthy of sharing with your friends. Just this morning a colleague posted this beta tool on our listserv for discussion.
Not only did I find the slash tags a wonderful addition to easy Boolean logic, narrowing my search instantly, but it was easy to figure out.  Blekko struck me as a cross between a search engine + Boolean logic + social bookmarking site. This could be a valuable tool to use for a class research project (s) with slashtags for projects, narrowing, etc. Blekko struck me as a cross between a search engine + Boolean logic + social bookmarking site. This could be a valuable tool to use for a class research project (s) with slashtags for projects, narrowing, etc.  The spell check appears to need improvement, but be an earlier adopter and wait for that!
Don't miss the wonderful tutorial...done right! View here:

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

SLMS 2010 - Inquiry sites as requested at the GenY Students = GenY classroom breakout session

Here are a few of the great Inquiry sites that are out on the web. We have a growing number of local librarians who have embraced inquiry with gusto and are polishing their ability to transform hide 'n seek research assignments into true authentic learning experiences. Please call me, if you'd like to discuss how you too can transform your research project, into a 21st Century Model. There are great sites all over the web. These are just a few:
___________________________________________________________________
State Education Department-- K-4 Elementary Science Curriculum-- See Living Environment and Introduction.
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/pub/elecoresci.pdf
Foundations -- National Science Foundation-- Inquiry -- K-5 classroom- What dos it Look Like?
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_10.htm
Foundations-- NSF-- Inquiry Process Steps
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/ch_10.htm
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf99148/pdf/nsf99148.pd f
NCTM—Illuminations site—Math Inquiry
http://illuminations.nctm.org/
NASA GLOBE Project
http://viz.globe.gov/viz-bin/home.cgi?l=en&b=g&rg=n
VirtualInquiry.org - Inquiry Snapshots
http://virtualinquiry.com/cases/index.htm