Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know Getty The Internet has made researching subjects deceptively effortless for students — or so it may seem to them at first. Truth is, students who haven’t been taught the skills to conduct good research will invariably come up short. That’s part of the argument made by Wheaton College Professor Alan Jacobs in The Atlantic, who says the ease of search and user interface of fee-based databases have failed to keep up with those of free search engines. His article is responding to a larger, ongoing conversation about whether the ubiquity of Web search is good or bad for serious research. So what are the hallmarks of a good online search education? SKILL-BUILDING CURRICULUM. A THOROUGH, MULTI-STEP APPROACH. but not all — types of primary sources substantially easier than it’s been in the past, and knowing which are available online and which must be sought in other collections is critical to students’ success. TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOURCES. TECHNICAL SKILLS FOR ADVANCED SEARCH. Related
Manifesto for 21st Century Teacher Librarians Editor’s Note: This article was originally published as a Tag Team Tech column on www.voyamagazine.com. It has been reprinted and reproduced numerous times and in many places. We are making it available here to ensure that all of our readers have seen it. Manifesto for 21st Century Teacher Librarians By Joyce Kasman Valenza October 2010 A couple of summers back a young school librarian, fresh out of library school, asked a very honest question at one of our state retreats: We’re all doing different stuff. Well into the 21st century, it is clear that the concept of modern teacher librarian practice is not clear. What I know for sure is that if the Joyce who graduated from library school in 1976 (and again with a school specialty in 1988), heck, if the Joyce from the 2007/2008 school year, were to visit my library today, she would be stunned by the differences in my/our practice. And in my humble opinion some aspects of emerging practice are nonnegotiable. Reading Information Landscape 1. 2. 1.
Jules Verne : Around the World in Eighty Days: 5 Weeks in a Balloon (Wordsworth Classics) Jules Verne : Around the World in Eighty Days: 5 Weeks in a Balloon (Wordsworth Classics) Author: Jules Verne Title: Around the World in Eighty Days: 5 Weeks in a Balloon (Wordsworth Classics) Moochable copies: No copies available Recommended: Topics: Published in: English Binding: Paperback Pages: Date: Publisher: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company Weight: 0.49 pounds Size: 4.97 x 7.81 x 0.82 inches Edition: New Ed Amazon prices: used new Amazon Previous givers: Previous moochers: Wishlists:
Active Learning | Kristin Fontichiaro's Blog About Learning, Teaching, Making Things, and Libraries Building professional capacityTeacher-librarians are well positioned to impart data literacy to teens, but who’s giving instructors the resources and support that they need to do so?Kristin Fontichiaro, clinical associate professor at University of Michigan’s School of Information, and Jo Angela Oehrli, learning librarian at University of Michigan Library, were up for the task. As principal investigators of the two-year IMLS-funded project “Supporting Librarians in Adding Data Literacy Skills to Information Literacy Instruction,” they set out to design materials for high school librarians looking to foster data and statistical literacy skills in their students.“We were seeing on our own campus that data was becoming a powerful mode of expression and wasn’t working in ways that information literacy always works,” says Fontichiaro.
Field Trip Library Sustainable Teaching | Use the Impossible to Fail Quiz to Give Students Instant Remediation Does your gut (and your assessment) tell you some students didn’t get it the first time you taught it? Would you like to give students remediation exclusively for concepts they don’t understand? Isn’t it impossible to deliver precise remediation to each student in your classroom? The solution to these challenges is the Impossible to Fail Quiz. I had the opportunity to learn about this tool from Chris Aviles at EdCamp New Jersey. The Impossible to Fail Quiz uses two components of Google Forms that had previously been unexplored frontiers for me: “Go to page based on answer” and inserting page breaks. The quiz is impossible to fail because it directs students to a review video when they incorrectly answer a question. Start by opening Google Drive and creating a new Google Form: Follow the pattern of adding a page break and a question for as many questions as you want. Now it is time to add the magic of the Impossible to Fail Quiz: videos! Now return to your multiple choice questions.
Social Networking for Books: One Ring, or Loosely Joined? I have to confess that one of the social networking tools I find most valuable is Goodreads. (It’s a close second to Twitter, and way ahead of Facebook, Friendfeed, or Dopplr.) Unlike twitter, where I follow hundreds of people (possible because of twitter’s minimalism) and am followed by thousands, on Goodreads, I follow and am followed by a small circle of friends and people whose taste in books I trust. As someone who loves books, it is the pinnacle of private social networking for me. So it was with some interest that I read about Amazon’s acquisition of Shelfari. Of course, that could change quickly if Amazon throws their muscle behind Shelfari and integrates it into their overall service. But here’s the counter: open and interoperable applications, including open social networks. Some of my friends prefer LibraryThing. This applies to other specialized social networks as well. We’re entering the critical phase of that decision.