Information Literacy

It is a coincidence that this particular topic was our focus for the week because I happen to be starting a series of lessons in my middle school library over the very same concepts this week. I am going to do a complete series of lessons over considering sources when doing research online and how to find reliable information on the Internet. We began this week with a lesson over looking at the URL's and domain names for clues, very similar to what we did in the MAPing activity. However, I really loved some of the resources within our class activity for the week and definitely think I will be incorporating this into the series of lessons I already have planned. Because I have been planning this series of lessons, I think I was already pretty familiar with the concept and what the MAPing activity was trying to point out. I did really well on the information literacy quiz, just because I've been brushing up on all of this recently!

I decided to start focusing on this with students because I am noticing that when students have to do research, they go straight to Google or Wikipedia, print the information out or cut and paste straight into their documents. They have so little concept of how to find reliable or authentic information and even knowing how to properly cite sources and avoid plaigarism is sadly lacking. Along with these lessons, I am simultaneously teaching the use of state and district online databases, but students still need to know how to evaluate the information they find through those mediums as well. Students always want to take the easy way out, but I have told them that professors will laugh in their face someday if they cite Wikipedia as a source for their research! It does take a lot of critical thinking to evaluate these sites, but these are exactly the types of thinking skills that will benefit students in other areas as well.

Just a few notes on the other activities this week....I'm having trouble with my computer when I attempt to follow a blog. After I sign in and press the "follow" button on the blog, my computer goes crazy and starts opening anywhere from 50-60 windows faster than I can click them closed! Very strange. I am going to have to try to use another computer to see if I have the same problem. Therefore, I haven't managed to follow the whole class yet, but I will continue to work on it. I already had a personal blog as well as two blogs for my school library on Google, so I want to organize my Google Reader to keep the updates from the ETEC 524 blogs separate from the personal blogs I follow. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, but I will play with it this week.

As for Delicious, I was introduced to that in another course and to be honest, I wasn't a fan of it then, and I am not a fan of it now. Honestly, too many bookmarks in one place gets overwhelming to me. I've never been big on bookmarking anyway, although I know this is something that can help keep one organized, it just hasn't come naturally for me. I will try to use Delicious more to see more of the advantages, but so far, I'm not really fond of it.

Thanks for a good week!
Rachel