To begin with I decided to use the University of Alberta's Guide to Developing Students' Research Skills as the foundational model for my artifact. However, once I had mapped out all of the components in LiveBinders, I realized that I needed to start smaller. As a tool I plan on sharing, I do not want to overwhelm my colleagues with tabs upon tabs of information; especially for my colleagues who aren't very comfortable using technology.
My FAIL (First Attempt At Learning)
(Broussard, n. d.)
I have decided that in order to narrow down my topic, that I should just focus on one of the components of the research process. If it is a success, then I can continue to build the resource to include all of the components required for developing effective research skills. One of the digital literacy skills the BC Ministry of Education (2010) suggests that students learn is to "[m]odel legal and ethical behaviours when using information and technology by properly selecting, acquiring, and citing resources" ("Profile of digitally literate students"). The skill that I would like to create a digital artifact for is citing sources. While citing sources can be a tedious process, I am trying to find some interesting ways to teach students about plagiarism and citations. For example, I found a game that will work well as an effective review of plagiarism.
Triumphs with Technology
For my Vision Project, I have decided to use LiveBinders to create my digital artifact. At first I was considering Symbaloo and Pearltrees because they are both digital curation tools that allow the user to post different types of media that can easily be shared with other teachers and students. After a classmate suggested checking out LiveBinders for my project, I found that I preferred the tabbed organization of the binder over the thumbnails that both Symbaloo and Pearltrees use. Also, I like the format for LiveBinders because it provides the user with different templates in order to present text alongside the embedded media. In terms of strategy, I find this digital resource easy to use because of how simple it is to add a webpage into a binder just by clicking on a tab you can place in your toolbar. Also, since the binders created are so similar to the hard copy ones we all have, it is easy for someone who isn't as tech savvy to be able to access the information without having to learn a completely different concept. Here is a short video on how LiveBinders can be used by teachers:
(Tallent, 2009)
Challenges with Technology
(Parisi, 1998)
As is the case when learning to use a new digital tool or resource, it takes a while for the user to become proficient in using the tool to its full potential. While I feel like I have learned how to use LiveBinder at a basic level, I'm sure with more practice I would discover how to overcome some of the challenges I am facing. The first challenge I am facing with LiveBinder is the formatting of the pages. It is difficult to move embedded videos or place them in a desired spot. I have also hit a roadblock when it comes to inserting images that do not have a URL. I am unable to use the snipping tool to snag an image from within a PDF or website and drop it into the binder, so it has become limiting in terms of which images I can use. The final challenge that I have been faced with is organizing the tabs of the binder. Without a premium account (which costs money), I cannot access other levels of sub-tabs, so it was a bit limiting in terms of how to set up the tabs in a way that keeps them organized. In terms of future road blocks, a problem I foresee is integrating this particular digital artifact into another binder that will incorporate all of the necessary research skills. I have a feeling that I will have to recreate all of the pages again rather than being able to import the information into another binder. While I'm not at Fran's level of frustration with the technology (see above cartoon), I definitely have a few kinks I need to work out.
References
A guide to developing student research skills. (n.d.). University of Alberta. Retrieved 22 November 2015, from http://www.library.ualberta.ca/documents/focusonresearch.pdf BC Ministry of Education. (2010). Profile of digitally literate students. Retrieved 21 November 2015, from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/dist_learning/1012profile.htm Broussard, M. (n. d.). Plagiarism game. Retrieved from http://www.lycoming.edu/library/instruction/ tutorials/plagiarismGame.aspx Parisi, M. (1998). Off the mark. Atlantic Feature. Retrieved 26 November 2015, from http://3.bp.blogspot.com/nGsXjSAO7Jo/UX8Sj7iQLtI/AAAAAAAAAa4/uo2vTcYrgAI/s1600/ Screen+Shot+2013-04-29+at+7.38.20+PM.png Tallent, B. (2009). LiveBinders for teachers. Retrieved 26 November 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdG56uSubx0.
I have started to create my digital resource that will help students develop research skills required for the 21st century. By providing students with tools they can use to learn information literacy skills and to help them with the research process, my hope is that students will no longer view research papers and inquiry-based projects as a daunting task. While there are some great resources already available for students to use such as the Purdue Online Writing Lab, a resource I refer to all the time, directing a student to a website as comprehensive as this one can be overwhelming. By breaking down information literacy skills into its components, students can learn and practice these skills in smaller chunks and will have the ability to view and review the components at any point throughout the research process. In order to organize these components I have decided to use LiveBinders as a way to curate the resources and tools necessary to teacher the research process.
My Rationale
The following video by Seminole State Library (2014) explains the importance of developing information literacy skills and outlines the five components that students need to learn for their academic course work, but also for real world scenarios. It is important that students understand how the skills we teach them in school can be transferable and applicable to their life outside of school. Information literacy skills are necessary for completing research papers and inquiry-based projects, but they are also essential for when a person is wanting to find more information on a product before they purchase something expensive like a car or a house.
(5 components of information literacy, 2014)
My hope for this digital resource is that students will become so familiar with the research process by the time they leave high school, that these information literacy skills will become embedded in them so that they don't even need to think about the process, they just use it. Like with any skill, the more it is practiced, the easier it becomes.
Although I am not currently a Teacher-Librarian, what I would like to see happen at my school is an agreed upon research process that is shared across the curriculum. Students need some consistency when it comes to learning information literacy skills, at least in the beginning stages. Students aren't always able to see the connections or the similarities between writing a literary essay for an English class, a historical essay for Socials, or a lab report for Science. All of these assignments require the student to formulate a hypothesis/thesis and show support for it by providing evidence. These assignments also require information literacy skills; and it would be much easier to teach these skills, and for students to learn them, if the teachers were to all agree on a particular research process and style. This is where the Teacher-Librarian can act as the facilitator between the subject areas by teaching the students how these information literacy skills can be applied to different subject areas.
My Target Audience
(Prose Media)
Since I haven't had much experience sharing my work with a broad audience, I would like to share my digital resources in stages. I would like to start by sharing my resource with my students. I can see whether my resource is easy to use and effective in teaching the resource project and then work out any kinks before sharing it with my colleagues. Once I have tested my resource, I would like to start by sharing the resource with teachers at my school who teach the research process - especially with teachers who teach different subject so that I can ensure that I have created a cross-curricular resource that all teachers can use. I would like for them to peruse my resource or even try it out with their students. When I receive feedback from them, I would then like to share my resource with other educators online. One of my key takeaways from Richardson's (2012) book Why School? is how important it is to share resources among educators. I haven't decided yet where I will post this resource for other educators to access, but there are plenty of online sites that educators access for lesson plans and ideas.
(Campbell)
Students
Like the students in the cartoon, many students are not engaged in the research process and don't put much effort in finding a topic or conducting research on it. If students had a resource to help improve their research skills that they could access at home and school, students may be willing to put more time and effort into their assignment. By incorporating different digital tools, students will hopefully become more engaged in the research process.
Teachers
(Bacall)
Many high school teachers, including myself, are guilty of assigning an inquiry project or research paper to students with the assumption that they already have some information literacy skills because they grew up in the digital age and we don't have time in the curriculum to teach it. However, most students have not developed these skills or their skills are quite limited. While we want students to be critical thinkers, the research process can be daunting and overwhelming, which can limit a person's creativity. By providing a resource for teachers that they can use with their students in any subject area in regards to the research process, teachers are able to take the time to help foster the students' creativity and critical thinking skills rather than focusing on the basic skills they assume students should already have.
References
Bacall, A. (n. d.). Critical thinking. Cartoon Stock. Retrieved 18 November 2015, https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/critical_thinking.asp
Campbell, M. (n. d.). Homework project. Cartoon Stock. Retrieved 18 November 2015, from https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/h/homework_project.asp
Critical thinkers. (n. d.). Retrieved 18 November 2015, from
Prose Media. (n. d.). 5 tips to find your target market. Retrieved 19 November 2015, from http://blog.prosemedia.com/5-tips-to-find-your-target-audience/
Richardson, W. (2012). Why school?: How education must change when learning and information are everywhere. Ted Conferences.
Seminole State Library. (2014). 5 components of information literacy. Retrieved 19 November 2015, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ronp6Iue9w.
Developing a Digital Resource for 21st Century Learning
(Academic Styles, 2015)
When I was a first year university student I did not feel as though high school prepared me for the rigours of academic writing, especially when it came to researching and citing sources. I actually failed my first English paper because I hadn't learned how to properly cite sources in MLA style while I was in high school. I spent the first few months of university in the library with the style manuals spending hours teaching myself how to cite sources in MLA, APA, and Chicago styles for all of the different courses I was in. Now that the BC curriculum is going to include prescribed learning outcomes for digital literacy, it is my hope that all students leaving high school for post secondary education or to start their career will have the requisite skills necessary to be successful in the 21st century.
Since I am not currently teaching in my own classroom or in a Teacher-Librarian position, I would like to develop a resource that can be used by both classroom teachers and Teacher-Librarians. After conducting a reading review on the topic of ethical online behaviour pertaining to citing sources, I decided that I would like to create a digital resource that the staff and students can access from work/school, at home, or even once they are attending university, that will guide them through proper research techniques. By creating this digital resource, it is my hope that this will help students understand proper research techniques and how to use digital tools that will assist them in writing a research paper. The BC Ministry of Education Digital Literacy Standards that my digital resource would primarily focus on are Research and Information Fluency, Digital Citizenship, and Technology Operations and Concepts.
(Burnaby South Admin Blog, 2010)
Key Elements
I'm still in the process of deciding how much information I want to include in my resource because I do not want it to be overwhelming for other teachers who plan on using it with their students. I many need to start small and gradually grow the resource one teachers have started using it. The University of Alberta's Guide to Developing Student Research Skills includes many of the key elements required for conducting proper research. I would like to focus on including several of these key components in my digital resource. A diagram of the research model is below:
Another source of information I came across was Scholastic's 6 Online Research Skills Your Students Need which narrows down some of the key skills from above into the basic skills needed including: 1) Checking Sources, 2) Asking Good Questions, 3) Digging Deeper, 4) Being Patient, 5) Respecting Ownership, and 6) Using Networks. While these skills are pretty basic, I think this would be a good starting point for a digital resource that covers the main research skills needed for students. Another resource I consulted was Edudemic's Helping Students Become Better Online Researchers. One of the skills that I would like to include in my resource that was mentioned in this article is consulting an expert. The expert, of course, being the Teacher-Librarian. While I am hoping the students and staff would access this digital resource I'm creating from home, I think it is important that the students also have time in the library as a starting point for developing and/or increasing their research skills.
Format
I am planning on using a digital curation tool to compile the necessary resources for this project. I am hoping that the digital curation tool I choose (I can't decide between Symbaloo and PearlTrees) will be user friendly enough that even the staff members and students at my school who are not tech-savvy will still be able to access and use this resource with minimal problems. If I find that it is necessary to create a low-tech version of this assignment in order for more staff members to utilize this resource with their students, then I can do that at some point down the road. As for choosing a digital curation tool, I am leaning towards using Symbaloo because it is more widely know than PearlTrees and it has so many different options for embedding websites and tools. PearlTrees is another great option and I like that Word documents can be embedded directly, unlike Symbaloo which uses GoogleDocs. I haven't had too much time yet to explore all of the features both tools have to offer, so I will need to experiment with both tools in order to determine which one will work best for my audience. The following video explains the different features of both Symbaloo and PearlTrees:
(Bradley, 2015)
Audience
I would like to share this digital resource with my colleagues to begin with in order to ensure that this resource can be used throughout the school for a variety of subject areas. Once I have had a few colleagues try out the resource, I would like to share it with a broader audience. One of my goals is to start giving back to the online teaching community since I have "borrowed" so much from other teachers who post their resources online.
References
Academic Styles and Their Significance: Meet MLA, APA, Chicago, and EEE. (2015). Retrieved 12 November 2015, from https://studentshare.net/content/articles/academic-styles-and-their-significance-meet-mla-apa-chicago-and-ieee/
A Guide to Developing Student Research Skills. (n.d.). University of Alberta. Retrieved 12 November 2015, from http://www.library.ualberta.ca/documents/focusonresearch.pdf
BC Ministry of Education. (2010). Profile of Digitally Literate Students. Retrieved 11 November 2015, from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/dist_learning/1012profile.htm
Bradley, P. (2015). A Guide to Creating Pages in Symbaloo and Pearltrees - Social Media for Creative Libraries. Facet Publishing. Retrieved 12 November 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqVolGKuUcs
Hudson, H. (2015). The 6 Online Research Skills Your Students Need. Scholastic Teach with Technology. Retrieved 12 November 2015, from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/6-online-research-skills-your-students-need
Muthler, S. (2015). Helping Students Become Better Online Researchers. Edudemic. Retrieved 12 November 2015, from http://www.edudemic.com/students-better-online-researchers/
The 21st Century Learner. (2010). Burnaby South Admin Blog. Retrieved 10 November 2015, from https://burnabysouthadmin.wordpress.com/tag/21st-century-learning/
Over the past couple of months I've been reintroduced to digital tools such as blogs and webinars and given the opportunity to try out some new tools such as Digg and Symbaloo.
(Brown)
While I've created blogs before, I had never done anything more than insert a few pictures or links. Over the past few months I have learned how to embed videos and resize them using HTML coding. I learned how to tag and the importance of labeling blog posts in order to make them more searchable. While I don't think I would ever have the time to keep up with a blog, it is great that I now have more knowledge about how blogs work so that I can help my students should they choose to use a blog to demonstrate their learning.
(NSH, 2015)
In the past I have attended a couple of webinars, but during this course I discovered that you can actually save the webinars to watch at a later date. While you can't participate in the discussion that follows a live webinar, it is still a valuable tool for professional development. I already have a couple of webinars saved that I would like to watch during my next pro-d day.
(Rahul, 2013)
I have never used any type of bookmarking or RSS feed program before and, while I haven't spent too much time playing around with this particular tool, it has been an effective way of accessing the blogs of fellow classmates and commenting on each others' ideas. I would love to introduce this idea to students so that they are able to follow teacher websites and access them all in one place. I find it frustrating to continually update my class website when only a handful of students actually check it on a regular basis. By introducing this tool to my students, it will hopefully make my website more accessible to my students.
(Symbaloo Mobile App)
I have also never used digital curation tools in the past; mostly because I didn't know they even existed. I am currently in the midst of experimenting with Symbaloo and Pearltrees to house websites, documents, and tools. I also like that the webmixes that I create can be easily shared with colleagues, because that is one of my goals that I would like to work towards.
Moving Forward as a Teacher and Teacher-Librarian
Over the past month I have enjoyed viewing my classmates' blogs and having other people view my posts and comment on them. I think as a teacher and teacher-librarian it is easy to isolate ourselves in these jobs because we don't always work in the same space with our co-workers. It is also difficult to find time outside of the work day to meet with other teachers at the same school, let alone teachers at other schools within the school district. As a teacher-librarian, it is important to encourage collaboration between teachers within the school and within the district. I would like to start reaching out to other teachers in order to share ideas and lesson plans. As I said in an earlier blog post, I find myself "borrowing" material from other teachers online, but I never return the favour. While I would like to start small by expanding my Personal Learning Network to include my school district, I would like to eventually start sharing my ideas with a broader audience, perhaps even online.
(Via, 2010)
Sharing Lessons and Ideas by Expanding My Personal Learning Network
Over the last 7 years of teaching I have created numerous lessons, assignments, and projects that I am proud of, and feel as thought it is important that I share these resources with other teachers. While I do share with other teachers in my department, and sometimes with other departments at my school, I feel like it is my duty to start sharing my resources with a broader audience. Using digital tools such as blogs, Twitter, or other social media sites could be one way to reach a wider audience of teachers. I also feel as though I am at the point where I would feel comfortable presenting some of my ideas at a professional development seminar. While I would definitely be stepping outside of my comfort zone by posting my work online or presenting in front of a group of my peers, this is the next step in becoming a leader in teaching and learning.
(Kincaid, 2015)
Fostering a Positive Reading Culture
The topic that resonated with me the most is fostering a positive reading culture in my classroom and in the school. After reading the blogs of my fellow classmates, I compiled a list of ideas I would like to try out. The first one is having our staff create reading doors, or as another classmate suggested, a "Caught Reading" display, where teachers in every department would share the books they have read and enjoyed. While our library already has a "Staff Picks" section, having reading doors or displays around the school will receive attention from all students, not just those that use the library.
Another idea I gleaned from a fellow classmate is to look into virtual author presentation or webinars. While our school library already organizes at least one author visit a year, not all students are invited to attend because the library only has so many seats available. If the author visit was virtual, students could access the author presentation from their devices. Also, author visits are usually quite costly, so attending a virtual author presentations will keep costs down. After doing a bit of research into this topic, I discovered that Random House offers virtual author visits through Skype or other methods of video-conferencing (view the brochure here). As well, after visiting the Scholastic Book's website, I found information on Kate Messner, an author who advocates virtual author visits. Her website Authors Who Skype with Classes & Book Clubs provides a list of authors for students of all ages who will video conference with students for free. I haven't had a chance to browse through the authors, but have passed this list on to our current Teacher-Librarian to see if she is interested in organizing a virtual author visit.
Random House. (2011). How to Host a Virtual Author Visit. Retrieved 01 November 2015 from http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/HowToVirtualVisit_Brochure _WEB1.pdf
