Week 5

Wow, so some concepts are beginning to click as I realized that many of the themes we have been learning about reoccur.  Ideas are connecting and the light bulb has turned on. J

Readings

Wiggins & McTighe’s “Put Understanding First”

This article talks about high school curriculum and the difficulty students have about trying to apply their knowledge into various problems.  The authors state that the goal of high school is not to teach students content but to prepare them for the real-world.  To do that the high school curriculum must accomplish three things:

1.       Acquire important information and skills

2.       Make meaning of that content

3.       Effectively transfer their learning to new situations both within school and beyond

These ideas of transfer, meaning, and acquisition make up the majority of the ideas in this article.  You must have these happen to be a successful learner.  Teachers need to improve their methods by incorporating the teaching methods that provide direct instruction, facilitation, and coaching.  Unfortunately, high schools teachers and/or the curriculum fail to teach in the manner needed, which causes students to not be able to achieve these goals. 

I must agree with this article.  My favorite teachers were the ones I learned from the most because they use different teaching techniques.  It seemed like it was mostly my AP teachers that went above and beyond basic lecturing.  In fact, one of my history teachers made us participate in Socratic seminars, like the article mentions, throughout the semester facilitate our learning of the material. At the time I hated them because I do not like to speak in class, but they proved extremely informative.  I also notice that Kristen also uses different methods of teaching to help with our learning.

Chapter 3 “Learning and Transfer”

The idea of transfer continues with this chapter. Certain kinds of learning experiences lead to transfer.  These are the main characteristics of learning and transfer (53):

·         Initial learning is necessary for transfer

·         Knowledge that is overly contextualized can reduce transfer

·         Transfer is best viewed as an active, dynamic process rather than a passive end-product of a particular set of learning experiences

·         All new learning involves transfer based on previous learning

Other key points from the chapter about transfer and learning are that there is a difference between understanding and memorizing, the amount of time to learn affects transferability, the content in which one learns affects it, and all new learning involves transfer.  Of course these readings wouldn’t be complete is they did have the word “meta” somewhere in it.  This week the textbook discusses the metacognitive approach.  This approach assists students to learn about themselves as learners.

Like Wiggins & McTighe’s, the textbook also agrees that “Transfer from school to everyday environments is the ultimate purpose of school-based learning” (78).  After all what is school for? Most of us won’t spend the rest of lives in a school setting (even though somedays it feels like it); therefore, we need these transfer skills to help us be successful in the real-world.   I completely agree we the readings for this week, however, I'm kind of tired of all the "meta" words. My spellcheck doesn like them all either!

Class

Last class we dicussed summative evaluation questions,  split into groups, classified sets of questions, constructed models based on our classifications then walked around looking how other groups divided the questions. We watched a video with Dr. McGonigal: gaming can make a better world. This is what she discussed:

·         We need to play more games and games are powerfuld

·         We are not as good in real life as we are in game world—we are our best selves in game world

·         Playing games build trust between people

·         Give people the power to achieve epic wins

We did a workshop survey assessment based on Dr. McGonigal's presentation and we formative assessment strategies.

All in all, not a bad night. 

Week 4

Class

In class this week we viewed a few screencast from a couple classmates and I must admit I was impressed.  I know I personally recorded mine 10 times or so before I ended up with my final product; however, the few we watched blew mine out of the water.  They were so professional and helpful.  My best didn’t even compare to theirs.  I guess I need to practice more or download software that allows me to really edit my screencast.

We also we split into groups and tried to define information literacy without the terms “use information”.  It was interesting and more difficult than originally anticipated because each one of us had different ideas what information literacy is.  Some definitions were theoretical while others were practical.  We all agreed, in the end, that “understand” should be included. 

Not to sound like a goody-goody, but each class get more interesting and informative. I've never taken a class that instructed methods of teaching.

Readings

Formative Assessment and the Design of Instructional Systems

This article discusses two main concerns--formative assessment and feedback.  The author states that even with good feedback from teachers, students’ work does not improve, therefore, formative assessment is needed.  Formative assessment can be defined as the concern "with how judgments about the quality of student responses can be used to shape and improve the student's competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of trail-and-error learning" (120).

In order to improve their work these things need to happen:

1. Students "must develop the capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during actual production" (119).
2. Students "have the evaluative skill necessary for them to compare with some objectivity the quality of what they are producing in relation to the higher standard" (119).
3. Students "develop a store of tactics or moves which can be drawn upon to modify their own work" (119).

In the end, there should be a move from feedback from teachers to student being self-monitoring.

I personally prefer articles that are more practical versus theoretical which is what this one was.  Maybe students do not change their work for various reasons that do not have to do with the way they judged.  For instance, in the past I’ve ignored the assessment of teachers and did not change my work because I did not feel they were right.  Some assessments are based on one’s opinion and I do not always agree with the teacher’s opinion.  In another example, I was too lazy or did not wish to make the improvement in my work.  It wasn’t worth the few extra points to exert more effort.  While I respect many of the points this article makes, I do not agree with them all.

Chapter 6: The Design of Learning Environments

This chapter assesses the four different learning environments

1.      Learner-centered environments connect students’ previous knowledge to current academic assignments.

2.      Knowledge-centered environments help students to learn skills to understand and organized knowledge.

3.      Assessment-centered environments states that feedback is important and teachers should attempt to understand their students and help them build self-assessment skills.  Formative assessments and feedback fall in this category.

4.      Community-centered environments advocate a sense of community and that everyone has similar learning values and objectives.

I have to wonder, can librarians really provide all of these things—learning environments and formative assessments?  It seems like a large job.  While these articles offer theoretical examples can these all be applied to everyday life?  It's a lot to digest. 

Week 3

For this week I chose an article about information literacy, one on transliteracy, and one that ties the concepts together.  Originally, I wanted to do all articles on transliteracy, unfortunately, the term is so new that not many articles have been written about it.  The word is especially new in the library world and doesn’t even really exist in the archive world.  Spell check doesn’t even recognize it!

Introducing Transliteracy: What does it mean in academic libraries?

By Tom Ipri

From: College & Research Libraries News 71 no 10 532-3, 567 N 2010

This short article was one of the few I found on the subject transliteracy.  Because it is a fairly new term it still has a working definition rather than a concrete one.  It’s so new that not many library professionals understand or even know about the term.  Ipri explains that transliteracy is the relationship between people and technology specifically the social technologies. It’s about expanding how people communicate across various media—facebook, chat, instant message, etc.  This is a difficult concept for academic libraries to understand because it originally developed outside the library field, however, it is an important one.

Our Information Literacy Heritage: From Evolution to Revolution

By Cory Laverty

From Feliciter; 2009, Vol. 55 Issue 3, p88-91

This next article, Our Information Literacy Heritage: From Evolution to Revolution, develops the idea that information literacy has evolved over the years since the introduction of technologies such as the internet.  As Laverty explains that the most widely used definition, "To be information literate, a

person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (ALA, p. 1) was constructed in  1989.  That was before everyone had a computer and the internet was a common thing; therefore, the definition may not encompass all aspects of information literacy. Since students used tools such as Google, YouTube, and Facebook the definition continues to evolve.  As Laverty concludes “…paper captures something of where we are now, but not where we need to go.”

 Millennial Students' Mental Models of Search: Implications for Academic Librarians and Database Developers

By Lucy Holman

From: The Journal of Academic Librarianship Volume 37, Issue 1, January 201, pages 19-27

The final article ties the concepts of information literacy with the concepts of transliteracy.  While this article doesn’t specifically come out and use the term transliteracy it states problems that deal with it.  Students, now, use different modes to acquire information—it doesn’t not all come from a single source.  The article talked about the different ways library students collect their information—Google, library databases, online encyclopedias, online data bases, etc.  While Holman goes into detail about mental models (She defines it as “A mental model is an internal cognitive representation of a tool or system that helps one master it”) of search mechanisms that isn’t my main focus of the paper.  I wasn’t interested in specific numbers of how students searched and their problems with spelling in searching.  I wanted to know how this all connected to transliteracy and informational literacy.  As Holman writes, “Academic librarians who teach information literacy will face the need to reexamine how college students today search for and retrieve information and rethink the way they teach younger students search strategies and resource evaluation.”  Based on all the definitions discussed above I come to the conclusion that because we live in a world of transliteracy the way librarians teach information literacy needs to change.

In our last class we looked at Youtube and the screencast of good and bad videos.  As a class we came to conclusions what we liked and didn’t like about a few select videos.  I found this part of the class extremely helpful as I prepare for our screencast assignment.  I’ve never made one before and I was pretty nervous, however, after going over the pros and cons of each youtube video I had a better idea of what to do.  For example, my screencast should have an ending, not much background noise, good volume, etc.  Plus, I am glad that Kristin recommended a specific tool because I wouldn’t have had any idea what to use.  I am finding that Jing is pretty easy to use, however, unless required to I probably won’t make screencast in the future.

Week 2

The reading for this week emphasized various methods of instruction including online tutorials and screenshots. I must admit I am a bit old fashioned in way of technology, therefore, am not always a fan. Unfortunately, I cannot ignore the growing trend, thus, I must suck it up and and deal with it.  First, I will summarize briefly the readings for this week (plus a few comments of my own) and then I will discuss our last class.
One-Shot Workshop
This piece illustrates the importance of starting with a foundation to build a successful workshop. (In my opinion, this concept is important in every context). This chapter specifically discusses the Instructional System Design or ISD called ADDIE. The process of ADDIE is broken down below.
Process:
Analysis: This is the background work. What are the needs of the person or organization?
Design: This is where one would develop the context of the workshop and ways to see if the objectives are met.
Develop: At this stage, the material is made into workable lesson plans.
Implementation: Next, the workshop is gone through, revised, then implemented.
Evaluation: Finally, the workshop is evaluated and possibly reworked.

While this process may seem time-consuming (and I think it does) it is necessary because for these reasons:

Long-term use
Plug and play content
Stakeholder input
Consistency
Training for new instructors
Development for existing instructors
Quality

Additionally, the author states that there are 4 mains ways to design a workshop: by yourself, with a sounding board, with a partner or as part of a team.

Yelinek
Yelinek’s article reminded me of the steps we took in 501 to develop solutions to our organizations problems—what where the problems, conducting surveys and interviews, etc.

Online tutorials, such as the one in Yeline’s article, can be useful if a person has a specific question and can visit one of the individual modules; therefore, they did not have to waste their time on the ones where they already knew the answer to. They can ineffective if the user does not already know how to use certain components of the software. For instance, in Yelinek’s article not all the users knew how to pause, replay, or stop a movie once it started playing. A user must know some basic computer skills to use an online tutorial.

The purpose behind this project was to create a tutorial for distance-education students so they could navigate through the school’s curriculum faster and more efficiently. The articles describes the few problems group encountered once they implemented the tutorial and how they fixed the. In addition, they described that their online tutorial was separated into different modules that way a student could visit all of them or only the ones that pertained to their problems.
Johnston
Johnston talks about online learning and the effectiveness in developing information literacy skills.  She specifically mentions the outcome of the case study that deals with social welfare students.

Johnston mentions that“some studies indicate that students prefer this electronic medium for library instruction” (208).  I, on the other hand do not.  I do not feel a student may always received the information they need and a student cannot ask a specific question to an online tutorial.  I must admit, there are a few cases where a tutorial may suffice if it is for a simple enough concept.

In the end, the studies shows that most students had a positive experience using the online tutorial. According to the research, the tutorial was an effective way to develop information literacy skills. 

Griffis

This last and short article talks about the pros and cons of certain online screen capturing tools such as Winks, SlideShare, and Trailfire.  Compared to the other articles, I did not find this article as significant.  Perhaps because it was so short; however, I did find it informative because information I might use in the future. 

Class

I must admit, the first day of class and its scope was somewhat different than what I expected.  I find that this class will focus on the educational aspect or rather the teaching aspect of being a librarian. While I am surprised, it is a pleasant one.  My background of History, Business, and Women's Studies did not prepare me to teach--at all.  I never really thought of a librarian as a teaching (unless they are in a school), however, after some discussion I now understand. I am excited for knowledge I am to learn.

Having said that, there are a few things that I am dragging my feet at that we did in class. We produced a podcast about the core competences for our career path. I have never done a podcast before and to be honest I am not a fan. Part of it is my resistance of technology and the other part is that I do not like to listen to myself. Instead of sound like a professional I think I sound like a little girl. It is nice to know, though, how to make one. I know I'll use it in the future.

I do not have much else to say about class because we spend most of the time discussing what to expect, syllabus, etc and I already feel like this blog is too long.

Chapter 1 and 2 Readings

I am a person of few words who does not like to ramble on about things so I like to get straight to the point.

I was a little confused about the concepts between Teacher A, B, and C and I really couldn't tell much difference between B and C.  I know a lot over other students blogged about their experiences in those teaching methods during K-12, however, for me that was 10 years ago and I could not recall the methods my teachers used.  It seems most people use methods were they want you to memorize the information and remember it for test, but according to this book that isn't the most efficient method.  According to this book a person should know more than just facts and memorizing data to become experts.  Patterns and chunks seem to be the key.

Part of me has to wonder while it's important for us to know how to become better learners why must be all think like experts?  I think we (society) tries to hard to be perfect and fix everything by making people be "the best they can be," yet, isn't it our imperfections that make us unique. I know, a little off topic but at the same time this textbook makes me consider these thoughts.  It is a relieve to know that there isn't one perfect way of learning/teaching--too much pressure.