CI 553 Reflections - Week 2

Thoughts on the Standards & Education
As I make my way through our text, Achieving Educational Standards Using the Big6, I am struck by how relevant this information is for me and my students. Information Literacy is the overall umbrella under which nearly all of the authentic tasks in school can be defined. (Some things, like Metal Shop or Woods or Art or Music, don't fit as nicely into this category.) However, when we think about the "core" subjects, like English, History, Government, Science, and Math, it seems that the tasks Doug Johnson described as "low probability of plagiarism (LPP)" (qtd. in Murray, 2008, p.39) are the tasks that really engage students. Let's face it, an assignment like "Read Chapt. 13 and answer questions 1-8" isn't as engaging as something the students are actually interested in that is relevant to their lives. This brings up interesting questions about knowledge and learning: What is more important, to ask students questions that require them to think, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, or to teach them content that has great cultural value, like Plato, Shakespeare, Darwin, Newman, Pythagoras? Is there a way to do both at once?

As per standard one, and the idea that teachers (and pre-service teachers) need to "define and articulate the need for information" (Dynamic Schedule), I thought Murray's idea of Backward Design was a great one, especially for longer, more involved projects. It seems essential that we start with the desired results of the task and work backwards to determine instruction (p.36).

The Real Deal: A Junior Research Project and the Big6
When my junior classes do our research project, I have found that getting students to ask what Murray calls "the essential questions" (p.37) can be quite time consuming, but worth the effort. It usually takes me 3-4 days of independent conferences to get the point where my students are ready to begin their research. Chapter 4 had some great tools that I will definitely use: fat questions vs. skinny question (p. 38), the research question rubric (p. 40), and the assignment graphic organizer (p. 41). This last graphic organizer really sets the stage for using the Big6.

When I started looking more closely, I realized that Montana's Library Media standards directly correlate to the Big6, which is another great reason to use the Big6 as a teaching tool. For example. LM standard one - "Students identify the task and determine the resources needed" is simply a restate of the Big6 skills one & two - task definition and information seeking strategies!

Using Ready Reference, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries
Though it was a bit frustrating, I appreciated the Self-Check Questions that came along with these notes. I was introduced to some new sources that are a fount of information and I will definitely use the Library of Congress, CIA Factbook, Bigyellow and Infoplease with my students and personally. Again in Chapter 5 of the text, I liked many of the provided graphic organizers about searching subject directories and evaluating web pages. These will be useful to research information for my social justice unit, as well as author lives and history, and speech and research topics.

Photo Credits: These images are available through a Creative Commons License. Thanks to Flickr users Oberazzi and Wok for use of their images.