Reflection

Reflecting back on this course, Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom, I take away with me an abundance of new and vital information. As an educator, I feel much more confident about moving out of my comfort zone of the “paper classroom” and venturing into the “paperless world” of the Internet. I feel eager to embark on teaching my students the “strategies for managing information on the Web” (Eagleton & Dobler, 2004, p. 1). Furthermore, I now realize that it is acceptable to learn along with my students; to me, this is a 21st century skill in and of itself. Two years ago, I would have never contemplated this idea. I was that teacher who had the mindset that if I did not know how to do it, then I surely could not teach it. I knew very little about technology, and I refused to go out on a limb and chance looking incompetent in front of my students. In the past few months, I have discovered that not knowing as much as your student, or just not knowing an abundant amount of information regarding technology, is acceptable and should not deter a teacher from testing the waters with their students. David Warlick firmly believes that as long as you and your students are learning, it is acceptable to make mistakes because “you adjust and you learn from that” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). I am making a concerted effort to heed David Warlick’s advice, and have slowly begun to implement more technology into my lessons to help my students progress efficiently and effectively into this ever present digital world.


This course has also taught me to reevaluate how I view literacy. I understand now that “literacy is changing, it is evolving” and I need to “prepare my students for their future” because their future will be technology driven (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). In order to accomplish this goal, I must ensure that my students are well versed in what Dr. Douglas Hartman refers to as “the new literacies” which he has expressed as five different strategies: “questioning, searching, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). Students will need to apply these new litercies as they “read and write online” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). In order to ensure that my students comprehend these new literacies, I will teach them how to “develop good questions”, “read search engine results”, “fact check and cross reference” the information to ensure it is “trustworthy”, how to fit all of the information they have compiled and “fit it all together” so that it is coherent and understandable. Finally, I will teach my students how to communicate all of this information, so they can share it with students “in the online world” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).

In order to accomplish the above mentioned goals, I will continue to apply these strategies as often as possible into my lessons. For example, the first thing I plan on doing is modeling for my students how to use search engines to locate websites and then test these websites for reliability because I do not want my students to think that because a website is on the Internet, it is credible. Next, I will work alongside my students and create with them an inquiry-based project where they will “identify essential questions to explore” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). I have always modeled for my students how to answer open-ended questions-I have offered them strategies to aid them in the process of thinking more deeply about a question so they could answer these types of questions more critically. For example, when I have my students in literature circles and they are preparing to ask their classmates questions, I always tell my students to make sure they ask the type of question that will promote discussion. Never ask a question that requires a yes or no answer. I have learned through this course that “taken literally, inquiry means not just questioning, but questioning into something” and that if the students’ questions are rich and deep, they will inevitably “lead to more questions” (Thornburg, 2004). In essence, this will “form the basis for a research project. Since my students and I work on answering open-ended questions throughout the school year, I believe this will help them in the question phase of the inquiry-based project.

Another goal I plan on achieving is to become more adept at using specific technologies such as Jing, Audacity, Google.docs, and Moviemaker. The speech and drama teacher in my school set up his own webpage using Jing, Google.docs, and Audacity. One week before school started, his students received a letter supplied with the information they needed to log onto his website. When his students logged on they were warmly greeted personally by their teacher; he welcomed them to the course and he informed them of his expectations, and he explained how to maneuver around the site. Another terrific aspect of this use of technology is that the students can access their teacher’s website from home, so if they are absent for whatever reason, they can find homework, future projects and or assignments with the click of a button. I would like to create a website for my English class by next school year. I also relish the idea of creating book trailers with the use of Moviemaker. What a wonderful way to spark students’ interest and possibly turn some of my “non-readers” into readers.

In closing, I think that educators need to realize that “the nature of information has changed; information has become increasingly networked and increasingly digital” and this in turn affects how we learn, it affects the nature of literacy” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). Educators need to let go of that “I am not technology-savvy mentality” and realize that it is acceptable to make mistakes as long as you are “learning from that experience” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). It is necessary for educators to expose their students to the Internet and all it has to offer so that their students will be successful in and out of school.



References:

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Essential questions in inquiry projects. [DVD]. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). New literacies. [DVD]. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Skills for the future. [DVD]. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Thornburg, D. (2004). Inquiry: The art of helping students ask good questions. (Excecutive Briefing No. 402). Retrieved from http://www.tcpdpodcast.org/briefings/inquiry.pdf