I sometimes think I harp on this too much, but honestly, one of the best skills we can arm students (and everyone else) with these days is the gift of being able to research. The ability to recognize a good source and a bad source. The ability to cite where information was found so it can be verified by others. The ability to verify or disprove hypotheses and theories. Information literacy is a very necessary life skill.
Sadly, research is like math. So many students believe that they don’t need to learn it, and yet they use research skills every single day as they use Wikipedia to settle arguments with friends or use a search engine to figure out how to make their MySpace profile blink. They do research without ever realizing that’s what they’re doing (not unlike how they use math).
For the most part, I really like like this list of research tips. It covers the basics of getting off to a good start in conducting research. My only complaint is that Wikipedia is suggested as a valid starting point for conducting research. Longtime readers know that I’m against Wikipedia as a primary research tool, but it can help give you a direction when you’ve exhausted other avenues of research, as long as you remember you’ll have to do extra research to confirm or deny what you’ve found in the article.
Learn to conduct good, solid, defendable research!
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management, Information Architecture at 7:31 AM EDT
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Usually when we think about reading chunks, we think about bite-sized information. Apparently, though, this terminology is now being used to describe a way of presenting text.
The concept is an interesting one. Because our eyes can actually only see a certain area, a method has been developed that essentially uses white space to break up text into chunks that can be seen by the natural range of the eye without moving. Studies are showing that this method of presenting text has positive results on comprehension, which is always a good thing.
I tried a couple of times to read material presented in this method, and I just couldn’t do it. I can see where it’s useful, and I’m betting that it’s very beneficial for those who have a hard time staying focused on textual material, but my mind just can’t wrap around it yet.
Is this the future of online material? Broken into small phrases so our eyes can better process them?
Posted by Rebecca as Information Architecture at 8:12 AM EDT
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We live in a world super-saturated by available information. It’s just one side effect of living in a world connected by the world wide web.
While the web provides us with the ability to find all kinds of information on topics we find interesting, it also provides us with a new conundrum- how do we know we can trust the source of our information?
What’s truly scary in this new world is that students who once learned how to judge information through school-induced research projects are now being bombarded this information with very little guidance in how to evaluate what they’re finding. An amazingly high number of students will research a topic for a school project strictly by querying Wikipedia. Many of these students have no idea how to find information the need in a book or journal.
Information literacy is a skill these students are going to need in order to survive this new information-rich world. In order to make good decisions, to learn what’s real, they need to be able to determine what information was generated to pass along correct information, and what was created to entertain people. They have to learn it from somewhere, and schools seem to be finding it hard to squeeze it into an already impossibly packed schedule.
What’s the right response? How do we help students learn how to discern a good source of information? No one really seems to be certain yet, but steps are being taken to help create a new breed of information literates ready to take on the world.
Posted by Administrator as Responsibility, Information Architecture at 8:19 AM EDT
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I don’t recall how I stumbled on to my awareness of this book. It was recommended somewhere, and the reviewer was so upbeat about it that I thought I’d like to read it for myself.
The Courage to Teach came across more as an inspirationally-toned solution book than anything else. Despite my resistance to the tone, I did find some of it very thought-provoking.
Parker J. Palmer returns repeatedly to the idea that good teaching stems from a person whose sense of identity and integrity are in alignment. This repeated theme combined with ideas on creating a safe space for students to create and think freely, to work within communities, that it painted a classroom scene that was actually fairly worthy of well-designed Web 2.0-enabled classrooms.
It was rather interesting to watch the ideas unfold. I’m going to review my notes a few more times over the next week as I watch my own teaching, and how my colleagues work with their own students because I really am curious to see how this idea of integrated identity and integrity work together to produce a well-crafting teacher.
Posted by Rebecca as Information Architecture at 8:20 AM EDT
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I think this is something I probably keep revisiting, but I think it’s fairly interesting, especially in light of shifts slowly coming about in education.
When I was taking my oral comps for grad school, my chair asked me about my views on preserving data when the medium it has been captured on becomes obsolete.
I answered the question from a physical standpoint- you transfer the information onto a newer medium before the old one becomes obsolete. He thought that was a basically good, but incomplete response and kept asking me to consider the question from different points of view. It was hard to try to rethink preserving information in some form other than captured to a recent, relevant medium
The question was even more interesting because my background consisted of education and mythology. I loved sharing myths with people who visited the planetarium and then demonstrating how the myth were an oral tradition, capturing how a particular group of ancient people understood some astronomy concept or designated a constellation.
People have been looking to preserve information for all of time, prehistory and history both. What we’re currently seeing, though, is a desire, not so much to preserve, but to build up and fine-tune information as we work with it and become more familiar with its ins and outs.
In this time of collaborative learning, how do we approach the conservation of information that is constantly changing to reflect the newest knowledge?
Now there’s a question worth debating.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Knowledge Management, Information Architecture at 7:45 AM EST
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I rather like the idea of using an RSS feed to release bits of content in a digestible format. I had at one point considered making that part of the newsletter I still haven’t managed to start up, but the RSS method is a definite idea.
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning, Information Architecture at 8:19 AM EST
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I spent the weekend (Actually, I started during the snow days last week.) curled up with a e-book or two, and one of them was George Siemens’ Knowing Knowledge.
I really liked how the book itself was laid out and presented, because it visually brought home some of the main points of the book.
Most of the information was fairly familiar, but seeing it all compressed into one space helped drive a lot of it home.
My take-aways:
- Knowledge is organization, not structure.
- Somehow or other, this actually inspired a massive tagging project. I’ve never really been much of a tagger because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the whole taxonomy/folksonomy thing. Reading this one line immediately spurred me to reexamine my attitudes and practices regarding tagging.
- Repackaging is the personalization of the knowledge created by others.
- Remixing is hot right now. It has been for months now. I haven’t really explored it much for myself, but I know I need. When the need for remixing or mashing up is described this way, it really illustrates the connectivist role of remixing, and I think it even provides a strong argument for connectivism.
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning, Experiential Learning, Learning methods, Information Architecture at 7:48 AM EST
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Another step in the whole instructional designer vs. educational technologist debate in my head got more complicated over the weekend (my weekends are becoming time for hot and heavy inner reflecting) when I discovered this interesting article on interaction design.
I’m pretty certain that i don’t really want to be an instructional designer. They focus on adult education, and my experience is mainly children. I’m not terribly willing to give up on that.
Educational technology sounds like a good fit because I can develop curriculum and help design its implementation. It would satisfy two personal needs with one stone. I could work on K-12 material, create educational games. It really sounds like a great place for me!
Now I’m faced with interaction design, which actually does sound a lot like educational technology in many respects. I’m still trying to do some research to see if there are really any differences. Hopefully, it won’t and I’ll be able to go on my merry way. Anyone who is experienced with interaction design is welcome to offer what they know in the comments.
At any rate, I’m still struglling with answering questions about my professional goals once I get on my new path. I feel like I’m starting from Ground Zero.
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning, Experiential Learning, Teaching methods, Information Architecture at 8:15 AM EDT
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This article sounds a lot like my ultimate goals for RebeccaThomasDesigns.com. I haven’t explored the site map concept for this site, but the structure of this site kind of supports the navigation by desired section idea.
Structuring by guides (or subject matter) is a great way to help visitors focus exactly on the information they are searching for. If you structure it right, they they are free to consider other areas of the site as well, but they can completely ignore them if they don’t fit with the visitor needs.
Posted by Rebecca as Information Architecture at 7:41 AM EDT
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I was reading this article on the value of knowledge in narrative form last week, and didn’t feel particularly surprised.
For centuries, the passing of knowledge occurred through oral traditions. Members of a culture were designated as knowledge repositories and learned all the knowledge available to pass on, and in turn passed it on to others. they were respected for this ability.
In time, written language was developed and these stories that had been passed were recorded. We now often refer to them as mythology or folklore. Knowledge was embedded in stories, and people were expected to listen carefully and interpret the meaning from the context of the story.
Of course it makes sense for knowledge to be passed in a narrative format. Much of what we know of ancient cultures was passed on this way.
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management, Teaching methods, Information Architecture at 7:52 AM EDT
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