This week's topic is one on which I don't think I have much to offer. I don't do serious research, nor do I teach serious research at this stage in my life. As a teacher, my online searches are not very sophisticated. I sometimes search for teaching ideas using Google and search terms like "teaching The Call of the Wild," and I am easily able to sift through what I find. I'm usually looking for something specific and practical when I search, like prereading activities or essay prompt ideas, and I can tell right away if a site is helpful for my needs.
In my personal life, I do research knitting patterns and yarns, and I have found one site especially helpful: Ravelry -- an online knitting community. http://ravelry.com Here I can look up a particular yarn and read reviews and view photos of hundreds of projects others have made with a certain pattern and yarn. Because of the quantity of information available to me, combing through this site is very time consuming, yet because of the number of participants, I know that I can trust this site to give me the information I needabout a yarn or pattern.
The task of teaching students how to evaluate what they find in the Internet is such a huge one. I wonder when are students developmentally ready for this challenge? How is "critical reading" on the Internet different that "critical reading" anywhere else? And I don't think we do an adequate job of teaching students how to avoid plagiarism -- and this can become a huge problem. At my school, we offer a course to 8th grade students called "21st Century Literacy," and students do some Internet research and receive instruction on evaluating online sources. It's a start, but I think we need to do more.
On the topic of bookmarking software: I am just beginning to consider the possibilities of how I might use this in my classroom. I will have my students reading The Call of the Wild as an online text this year, and instead of annotating our texts with Post-it notes, like we usually do, we'll be using Diigo to annotate the texts. I've always been a fan of the Post-it note, since we can't write in our class texts, and I'm curious to see how using Diigo compares to what I've done in the past.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Tess,
ReplyDeleteI don't know what bookmarking software is. Is Diigo a bookmarking software?
I,too, struggle with kids and reliable resources. No matter how many times I tell theme cite sources, they never do, AND they always use unreliable sources. I literally have to be with them in the library to see that they are using resources I approve of.
ReplyDeleteHi Tess,
ReplyDeleteI thought you must be quite the techie to take on the laptop initiative. I suspect this Digital Writing class is actively helpful to you. I hope that you will share your reflection paper or at least give us a progress report at the end of the term. You have the opportunity not only to blog, but to roleplay and bookmark and otherwise challenge your students to make meaningful connections, both cognitively and emotionally. Wow! Good luck!
JoAnn