Assignment 2
Rethinking Reference Resources
We
are a large school, so true collaboration with every teacher in a year is often
a hard target to meet. As a whole, our teaching community is a forward thinking,
like minded group who works together well and frequently; however as with any
large group there are several teachers still stuck in their ways, either from
habit or from lack of knowledge on how to further their practice and their
students learning. One example is a Gr. 7 teacher who I find uses technology
for the sake of technology, and often sticks to very basic research strategies
such as Google and power points. The other is a Gr. 3 teacher, who believes,
erroneously in my opinion that her students are too young to effectively
utilize digital inquiries and essentially only prepares booklets and signs out
books for her students to perform research. I will examine what stage both
these teachers are at using the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) and discuss
what improved practices they may be comfortable with, which will unquestionably
help to improve student learning and outcomes.
Gr. 7 Google Guru
I
worked with this teacher my first year in the position at my school when she
approached me to “collaborate” on a biographies unit she had always done with
the previous TL. I soon found out it was not really collaboration at all but
her showing me the outline she wished the students to use to gather information
from Google and then create a power point presentation. At the time I managed
to convince her to at the very least allow me to do a brief lesson on critical
and information literacy, how to find credible information and analyze
websites. I don’t think her intention was to collaborate at all, but rather
just to use the Library’s computer lab and since getting to know her better, I
feel she uses technology as a learning outcome rather than a tool to find
answers to their own inquiries. In terms of the CBAM I feel she is at the informational
stage of concern, I don’t think she would take initiative on her own to
implement new resources but would be open to learning about different methods
if I were to approach her with ideas.
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| Photo Courtesy of google.com |
In
order to level up her teaching pedagogy I would start by having a conversation
with her about how she seems to be spending a lot of time helping her kids,
particularly her ELL students, find appropriate sites. I feel this would be an
impactful observation as it addresses a challenge or concern that she may be
having with her teaching style, rather than her students. I would then show her
how multi-faceted and user friendly many of our subscription databases are; for
example how many of them have articles, videos and images all at a student
specific level, in-site citations or how often they have text-to-voice features
which could help struggling readers or ELL students. Some specific examples I
would provide her with would be National Geographic Kids, World Book
Kids/Student and the Dictionary of Canadian Biographies. I would make sure to note that these
subscription-based digital reference resources are credible and reliable, so
students will have to do much less analytic work and she can spend more
individualized time with students who need support, rather than helping everyone
sort through Google searches to find trustworthy and accessible information.
Obviously these databases possess a finite amount of material so it will be
important to point out to her that some students may not find what they are
looking for and will need to do a broader open internet search. I feel that
even if she could begin by getting students to always start with databases
first before accessing general search engines it would be a pedagogical win and
her students would have a much easier time acquiring data.
Gr. 3 Anti-Internet Instructor
For
this teacher, I’m really not sure if it’s a lack of confidence in her student’s
abilities or if she just feels incapable of teaching them how to use technology
effectively. In either case, a few quick lessons in the library would resolve
both issues and hopefully create a whole new learning opportunity for her
students. Thankfully she is open to collaboration, but up until this point has
preferred that her own teaching methods used. I would say in terms of CBAM she
hovers around stage 2 or 3 with regards to levels of concern, as I assume she
is starting to find the copying and assembling of booklets and book curation a
bit cumbersome.
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| Photo Courtesy of orderofbusiness.net |
I
would definitely engage her slowly so as to not overwhelm her with unfamiliar
technology, by offering lessons to adapt her students’ final products to be
digitized using iPad apps such as Book Creator or Explain Everything. I could
then introduce her and her students to an online image reference resource such
as Pixabay.com or Pics4learning.com. I would hope once she sees how quickly and easily her students become skilled
at the iPads and how their work becomes more dynamic and valuable as a result, the
next step would be to try and introduce a collaborative inquiry project. For
this project I would then suggest supplementing her use of books with simple
databases, such as the ones mentioned above, as well as kid friendly search
engine reference sources such as KidRex.org or Sweetsearch.com. With any luck
she would see how capable her students really are, as well as how little prep
time is involved on her part once students understand the basics of information
and digital literacy. I would also hope that she would see the positive impact
it could have on not just her students’ work, but their digital and critical
thinking skills as well. These types of technology skills that are new to
teachers can be much easier to implement with assistance, so at first it may
only be effective when applied in a collaborative setting, but I think with
enough exposure to and experience with new digital reference resources it could
become a part of her teaching methods.
Conclusion
In
summary, I think both these teachers are in a professional position of being
open to change and with some guidance and support could bolster their teaching
practice by using digital reference resources more effectively. By doing so,
students would be much more engaged and have greater opportunity to improve
their information literacy skills. Their access to high quality, credible
information would advance learning outcomes and their new research processes
would help to develop life long digital proficiency.
Works Cited
“The
Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM): A Model for Change in Individuals.” The National Academies, 2005, www.nationalacademies.org/rise/backg4a.htm.
Dictionary of Canadian Biographies, http://www.biographi.ca/en/
National Geographic Kids, natgeo.galegroup.com/natgeo/archive/home?p=NGMK&u=39sbo
World Book Online, http://www.worldbookonline.com/ewol/home
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