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To go along with the previous post, this video is a little reminder: A Vision of Students Today. I'm sure you've all seen this video or a similar one, but it's powerful to watch it often. Enjoy.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Online Inquiry Units
In my reading classes, I am a strong proponent for explicitly teaching strategies to help students construct meaning. I believe students benefit from read-alouds and think-alouds during which they watch me read and walk through the reading processes I use to build comprehension. After purposefully practicing strategies, my students begin to internalize the skills necessary for reading carefully. In the past, I have specifically taught students methods for summarizing, connecting, questioning, inferring, etc., as they read the various genres we studied. Then I went on to my social studies, geography and English classes and asked my students to research content on the Internet without any intentional instruction. Recently I have come to rethink my expectations regarding technology and reading. The Internet is a unique genre that I have overlooked in my mini-lessons in the past. With this genre comes a whole new set of reading and thinking strategies that I must incorporate into my lessons.
The Internet is the primary information source for today’s students. We spend countless hours teaching students methods for reading various texts; we practice strategies for reading novels, textbooks, reference and other materials. For our 21st century learners, we need to connect the old with the new. To read information online, students must be able to recognize new text cues such as indexes, tabs, links and hyperlinks. The Internet lends itself to a unique “interconnection between comprehension and navigation” (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p. 34). Not only must we purposefully teach students how to navigate multiple sources, we also must teach them how to navigate back and forth between multiple programs and tabs. They also need skills for choosing trustworthy sources of information that fit their research needs. They must practice skills for analyzing web site credibility and then practice techniques for ensuring credibility in the content they create online. The process for reading and publishing online is daunting; teachers must incorporate these new skills into their lessons.
My last course through Walden, “Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom”, inspired me to add a new unit into my curriculum. I want to teach my students a unit of online inquiry. I think it is important for 21st Century learners to be able to determine what they want to learn online and know the best ways to access that information. Alan November provides useful strategies for teaching students how to evaluate web sites (Web Literacy for Educators, 2008). Check out the “Screencast” blog for an overview of his REAL strategy. After learning how to search and evaluate web sites, students need practice reading multiple sources and synthesizing the information. Once students develop these skills, they can become a part of the massive information-sharing network we have online. This is the best technique I have discovered for preparing students for their lives as 21st Century learners.
Check out my references. All literacy teachers should read these texts:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.
The Internet is the primary information source for today’s students. We spend countless hours teaching students methods for reading various texts; we practice strategies for reading novels, textbooks, reference and other materials. For our 21st century learners, we need to connect the old with the new. To read information online, students must be able to recognize new text cues such as indexes, tabs, links and hyperlinks. The Internet lends itself to a unique “interconnection between comprehension and navigation” (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p. 34). Not only must we purposefully teach students how to navigate multiple sources, we also must teach them how to navigate back and forth between multiple programs and tabs. They also need skills for choosing trustworthy sources of information that fit their research needs. They must practice skills for analyzing web site credibility and then practice techniques for ensuring credibility in the content they create online. The process for reading and publishing online is daunting; teachers must incorporate these new skills into their lessons.
My last course through Walden, “Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom”, inspired me to add a new unit into my curriculum. I want to teach my students a unit of online inquiry. I think it is important for 21st Century learners to be able to determine what they want to learn online and know the best ways to access that information. Alan November provides useful strategies for teaching students how to evaluate web sites (Web Literacy for Educators, 2008). Check out the “Screencast” blog for an overview of his REAL strategy. After learning how to search and evaluate web sites, students need practice reading multiple sources and synthesizing the information. Once students develop these skills, they can become a part of the massive information-sharing network we have online. This is the best technique I have discovered for preparing students for their lives as 21st Century learners.
Check out my references. All literacy teachers should read these texts:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Surviving the End of the World
Rick and I learned how to use iMovie last weekend for a class project for his Bachelor's degree. Hope you enjoy his strange directing...
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