This semester, students in Year 2 of the B.Ed. Program were given choice in two electives we wished to take in order to further our learning in specific areas. One of the courses I have chosen is PED3119: Integrating Technology in the Classroom with Professor Michelle Hagerman. For this course, we are required to complete five separate blog posts based on themes discussed during our class time. This week's topics surrounded Digital Literacy, Digital Citizenship and different methods of instruction to integrate digital literacy into our 21st century classrooms. We also had the opportunity to participate in a Google Hangout with Amber White, a Michigan-based colleague of Professor Hagerman's, who shared some very eye-opening ideas about how to conduct inquiry in the classroom. She and Professor Hagerman introduced using a framework that supports teaching our students about how to be reflective and productive members of the online community. This framework has been given the acronym PST2 + iC3, which really stood out to me an excellent jumping off point when trying to encourage students to conduct their own inquiries using digital skills, such as collecting and representing information found online.
The acronym I mentioned above stands for the following words and phrases put together: Purpose, Pre-existing Knowledge, Search, Source Selection, Type, Trustworthiness, Identify Important Information, Compare, Connect, and Continually update Understanding. Amber advocated for the use of this framework when teaching students how to conduct inquiries in digital spaces. Inquiry is a messy, recursive process, so having a structured, common language to return to is vital in ensuring that the purpose of the inquiry does not get lost in the ever-twisting roads of the world wide web. When students begin an inquiry, or any work in general, they should always be mindful of their purpose. What is the reason they are even online to begin with? Amber suggested having your students write out their purpose on a tent card and sticking it above the computer as a constant reminder - I love this idea and will definitely remember it for the future! Next is identifying pre-existing knowledge the students might have on the topic they are inquiring about. This means communicating possible biases as well as things that the students are unsure about and want to discover. Based on the purpose of their inquiry, the students then identify what key words or phrases they think will be most helpful to their search for information. This is a living list and should be updated constantly. Next comes selecting sources that they believe would be reliable. Should they choose blogs, Wikipedia, or other types of websites as their sources? How come? When they come across a source that could be of potential use, should they check it against other sources? This stage encourages dialogue between students to talk about what they know about reliability, but it also requires a lot of modelling from the teacher. Amber talked about doing a similar type of inquiry as a whole class and going through these steps all together so that they students have an example and scaffolding for their own inquiries. Modelling the types of questions that should be asked is vital to set students up to succeed in their own digital inquiries. This process of a gradual release of responsibility through different level of inquiry is also suppoted by Coiro, Castek and Quinn (2016) in their article Personal Inquiry and Online Research. The next step of 'type' ties into the source selection. What type of source will lend itself to being most useful for the given inquiry? After the sources are selected, students must decide whether or not they are trustworthy. This is a huge component of teaching students how to do research online. Unless taught otherwise, students generally tend to select the first source that pops up at the top of their search. We must teach students how to evaluate sources to determine whether or not they should be trusted. Some fun mini lessons that can be incorporated into this process could be dissecting hoax websites such as The Northwest Tree Octopus, or The Pomegranate Phone with your students to look for indicators of reliability. Once reliability has been determined, students need to identify important information. Amber described this step as one of the most difficult for her students. She explained that one of the biggest challenges when teaching inquiry is getting students to extract information from sources that actually pertains to their purpose. Students need to be able to put ideas into their own words. If they are unable to read the source to begin with, then it is probably not usable for their purpose. This goes back to the messy and recursive nature of the inquiry process - it will take a lot of time. Finally, students should be comparing, connecting and continually updating their understanding as they work through their inquiry. The opportunity to hear from Amber was fantastic and really solidified the PST2 + iC3 framework into something that I can picture myself actually using in my future practice. I am still nervous about the process, as it seems like doing something like this with my own students would be a giant undertaking, but I believe that doing the things that we are uncomfortable with lead to the most growth, which is something that I also wish to model in my teaching practice. Stay tuned for more on this topic, and thanks for reading! -Miss. Coleman References: Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Quinn, D. J. (2016). Personal Inquiry and Online Research. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 483–492. Full article can be found at: http://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1450
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AuthorJessica Coleman holds a Bachelor of Education as well as an Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences, both from the University of Ottawa. She is an Ontario College of Teachers certified teacher, currently working towards a Masters of Education degree at uOttaw, as well. Archives
September 2018
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