21st Century InfoFluency

B.C. (before class) seems a long while ago, but we’ve learned a great deal and our enthusiasm for applying some of that to our teaching practice is infectious.  How can what we’ve learned in two short weeks help with our essential question:

“How can we build 21st century learners who are smarter and more critical users and creators of information?”

(Post a few ideas here but send your overall class reflection via e-mail).

We have discussed the great variety of technological changes and improvements that make up our present and future worlds.  Of course, our essential question is:  how do these advancements affect, positively or negatively, how students will learn, what they need to learn, and how we will teach now and in years to come.

One word that comes to mind is balance.  We need to strive for care and caution in the level of dependence on digital devices.  Developing interpersonal skills, problem-solving capabilities, and critical thinking are goals of a lifelong citizen-learner.  Will moving toward an increasingly digital learning and recreational environment jeopardize or enhance this vision?

Just today I came across innovative ways that digital learning environments inspire students (the good), how digital learning environments encourage anti-social behavior (the bad), and how young people are exploited in unbelievable online worlds (the ugly).  These extreme variations will only multiply.  How can educators and parents guide our learners through this maze, hopefully creating a safer, kinder, and gentler online world?

“Change” is the candidates’ word of choice as the “YouTube” election approaches.  Perhaps there is a shift toward more participation in our democracy as a result of the arena that Web 2.0 has created with blogging and user-created content.

Let’s create our own scenario:  what is one issue or one question that you would like to present to a key decision maker (superintendent, legislator, politican) to address, improve, or change our 21st century teaching and learning?

1.  Travel back in time . . . to the distant past of 1998 or so.  Would we have dreamed we’d be switching from paperbacks to a Kindle e-reader?  Dreamed that we’d create alter-egos (avatars) and operated in an online 3D space called Second Life?  Dreamed that we’d be able to create online content without having to know HTML or any programming languages? Dreamed that our students could create digital videos with editing software that is readily available?

2.  Now travel forward to 2018 (will I be retired?).  What will the learning landscape look like?  Will gaming-type environments offer students a content-rich virtual classroom?  Will e-readers like the Kindle finally replace those impossibly heavy and quickly out-dated textbooks that student slug around now?

3.  What skills will students always need no matter what tools they use?

4.  What do any inevitable changes mean for “netiquette”  and appropriate social behaviors in the online environments?

How can we fathom the vastness of the web?  We can’t.  So what’s our strategy?  Perhaps we should build a toolbox with sites we can’t operate without.  For each of us the toolbox will vary.  Today we experienced a great variety, from Flikr photo sharing to i-SAFE internet safety program to the WiiFit and Guitar Hero. 

So here’s something to think about:  if you were asked to show a colleague 5 sites or tools that you would recommend for his/her toolbox, what would they be?

For me: 

1. Google — for the depth and breadth from Google Docs to Language Tools, to iGoogle and beyond.

2.  Shift Happens video — if they haven’t seen it, they need to.

3.  Joyce Valenza’s School Web Page — she’s a goddess who must not sleep– need I say more!

4.  ITSE’s NETS for Teachers and Students — where do we need to get to and how do we get there?

5. PicLens –like an art gallery for your photos, images, and web videos.

One piece of the information literacy pie is selecting the best sources for the information inquiry.   Students need to develop search strategies that will steer them to the most appropriate tools.

With the availability of curriculum-based databases like SIRS Knowledge Source, online encyclopedias, and Student Resource Center Gold, we can guide our students to a treasure trove of reliable resources.

But it brings us to several points to ponder:

• What is the best strategy when it comes to teachers embracing the databases to construct assignments differently?

• What analogies can we make when we explain the nature of databases to more scholarly reseearch?  (Recall the NBC vs. HBO analogy in “Richard Sly, Library Guy” video).
• Again, it’s the product vs. process or efficient vs. effective debate.  What effect does the relative ease of clicking one’s way through a database search and results have on critical thinking?
• What good search habits, strategies, and techniques should a student have in his/her toolkit?

It seems that there is no magic formula that infuses students with  critical skills to help them manage the increasing level of “data smog.”  In our conversation today at Morris Library, we realized that students are the same essentially, no matter the level.  The University wrestles with the same issues we do:

• Students think they already know what they need but they don’t know what they don’t know.
• Accommodating instructors’ schedules which are already overloaded with other initiatives and mandates in addition to the curriculum.
• Helping students make the transition from merely knowing how the technology works to knowing how to use it for increased quality of life.

How can K-12 and Higher Education partner to give voice to the necessity of information literacy skills as integral to a student’s lifelong learning?

Is the online tutorial model the most logical for large campuses?  Take a look at James Madison University’s Go for the Gold.

Or is the move toward making libraries more edutainment-oriented the wave of the future?  The bells and whistles of the Student Multimeida Design Center are appealing (as are the Macs) but the true test is the increase in student productivity and creativity.

As a possible addition to or alternative to the traditional, more scholarly research paper, I-SEARCH encompasses an array of information literacy-related skills.  With it’s purpose to enhance students’ sense of inquiry, improve the understanding of the process, and reduce the possibility of plagiarism, can teachers massage it to reduce the “it’s all about me” factor and increase the rigor factor?

Are there other research possibilities that would enhance the meaningfulness to this essential project?  Take a look at Project-Based Learning as an alternative http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning. Another option is the Multigenre Approach http://www.ncte.org/profdev/online/ideas/freq/114026.htm.

Essential question: Will both educators and students adopt the philosophy that “information literacy applies to anyone learning anything, anywhere, at anytime.” (Middle States Commission 2003)?

Seems like the plethora of Google Products has snared us!  From simple searching, to Sites, to iGoogle, to the Earth and Sky, what a vast array of tools Google has created in 10 short years to provide us with a panoramic view and journey into personalizing the web .  It’s Web 2.0 and more, mostly all for free.  But stop and think:  there are advertisers lurking behind that clean white facade gobbling up the crumbs you leave behind!

Today’s thought:  Is there something Google should/could do better or differently to enhance students’ searching experiences?  Or, is there something we as educators can do differently to create a more sophisticated Google user?  Will there be a Google 3.0?

As we get acquainted and explore the course content, we will be both astounded by the wealth of information at our fingertips and the necessity of information/digital/media literacy for our students.  Speaking of “tips”, when can we pinpoint the tipping point of the ubiquitous web?  When did it become an indispensable source of information?

Here are several more points to ponder:

• Are these “exponential times” taking a toll on our collective psyche?  How do we help students manage the information bombardment that will only increase?
• Is there a lot of truth that “Gen Y cares less about knowing information than knowing where to find information.” (Newsweek 2 Jun 2008).
• How do we move students from “player” to sophisticated and critical users/creators of information?
• Then how do we facilitate  transforming that information into knowledge?