Moving forward with Inquiry & Literacy

As I began this class I had previously had had students mainly perform research using preapproved sites where I provided the questions and the websites that were to be used to collect the information to answer the questions. During this course I have learned a great deal about the process of teaching students to use the web more effectively. Prior to this course I had always felt that it was best for the teacher to locate the websites to be used to prevent students from encountering any incorrect information or inappropriate information. This belief has caused me to be very restrictive in my web based activities in the past. I now realize that by doing that I am actually restricting my students’ ability to learn and develop the skills that they need to be literate in the web 2.0 society that we are living in today. In the future I plan to allow students more instruction in the evaluation of websites for accuracy and having relevant information and I will do this at the beginning of the year. Students go home and have virtually unlimited access to the internet, if we do not teach them to be critical consumers when they are in a monitored environment (such as school), they are not going to learn the skills when they are accessing the internet at home.

I have just begun a new project with my students where they are having a great deal of freedom to select the project topic, develop essential questions, and to locate the resources to be used. Honestly, I do not think I would have attempted such a project if it wasn’t for this course. I am giving the students a great deal of freedom when it comes to the topic, as it must expand upon any of the standards we have learned this year. However I am adding more rigor to the assignment because the students must do more than just define/research the topic, instead, they have to compare or contrast, identify patterns, explain cause and effect, etc. depending on the topic. This is key for inquiry projects because as Eagleton and Dobler (2007) discussed “not only is it critical to allow students to choose their own topics, but most students will devote additional effort if they are also given some latitude to demonstrate what they’ve learned in a format of their own choosing. “ Additionally, Eagleton and Dobler (2007) continued to say that students may need guidance in developing the project and examples would help students to understand what the project should include. I think one key element in my project is having students to analyze the sources that they find to see if they are relevant and accurate. I will do this by utilizing the strategies provided by Alan November (2008) with the Get REAL strategy for analyzing the information on websites students are locating.

As I look to the future, I plan to incorporate at least one inquiry project each semester into my classroom syllabus. By teaching the strategies that will increase web literacy and having students understand how to develop essential questions, locate resources, analyze the sources for accuracy, then synthesize and evaluate the information into a inquiry projects, my students will be learning skills that are important not only for my class but for their future learning as well. It is critical that students learn these skills in the classroom as they are going to need them in the future for success. The world is changing so rapidly and we have to prepare students for a linked world where they will communicate with students all over the world, and the web is changing so rapidly and there is really no limit on what we can find and access on the web. Even considering how many more resources there are today than there was in the past, the change in the future will be even more rapid than in the past. Berners-Lee discussed at the TED convention in 2009, how we should be looking at the web where there would be all linked data, more than documents but the data that can manipulated. I found that really amazing to think about having that level of information available on the web and how critical it will be to have students be ready to manipulate the information that they find on the web.

Berners-Lee, T. (2009, February). Tim Berners-Lee on the next web. Retrieved April 25, 2010 from TED2009http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

Eagleton, M. and Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet Inquiry. New York, NY. Guilford Press.

November, A. (2008). Web Literacy for Educators. Thousand Oaks, CA. Corwin Press