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AASL Standards and ISTE Standards to Internet Research by Janet Murray |
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Author, Achieving Educational Standards Using the Big6 Linworth Publications. 2008. |
Correlate Mike Eisenberg's and Bob Berkowitz' Big6™ Skills with the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner developed by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Students to organize an introduction to research on the Internet. Also look at national and state curriculum standards compiled by Education World® and the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Basic Activities:
concept mapping
Students often need guidance to refine their inquiry in terms appropriate to
the assignment. They may try to tackle a subject that is too broad or
too narrow. See "Visual Thinking and Learning" for techniques to help students organize their
thinking process. Concept maps are a useful visual
tool to establish hierarchical relationships.
Basic Activities: graphic organizers
There are many other graphic
organizers that will help students visualize
their thinking and brainstorming process. Consider using Inspiration®
software to facilitate the visualization of ideas. Big6 icons are now a symbol
library in Inspiration version 7!
Here's an interactive example of
using a graphic organizer to enhance vocabulary and understanding of the relationship
between words and their synonyms: The
Visual Thesaurus.
Advanced Activities: ask essential questions
Ask essential questions to "promote deep and enduring understanding."
2.1 Determine the range of possible
sources (brainstorm).
2.2 Evaluate the different possible sources to determine priorities (select the
best sources).
Basic Activities: subject directories
Students (and even adults) are
often frustrated when a search engine retrieves overwhelming amounts of
irrelevant information. Encourage new users to use a subject
directory of evaluated resources which organizes information
hierarchically. Some good starting points for educators and students
are: |
Basic
Activities: evaluating web sites
Because anyone can publish on the world wide web, it is critically important
that students learn to evaluate
web sites for authority, accuracy, relevance, currency, and objectivity. Use
How to Recognize an Informational Web Page to guide your evaluation. Look at the other guides to evaluating web sites on the Widener site.
See Kathy Schrock's extensive list of presentations and tools to evaluate web sites: Critical Evaluation of Information.
Basic Activities: keyword searching
Help students
improve their keyword searching
skills by using a simple exercise that compares
the results of a search using several search engines.
Introduce younger
students to search engines designed especially for them: |
Advanced
Activities: advanced search strategies
Try your earlier search in a metasearch engine (one
which searches using the results from several other search engines, e.g. Dogpile); evaluate
the results.
Explore advanced features of search engines by reading their help screens or
tips for searching. Use Google's Advanced Search to find information on very specific topics.
Use Finding
Information on the Internet: A TUTORIAL from UC Berkeley for more guidance on effective searching.
Basic
Activities: extract information from a source "Reading for Information: The Trash'n'Treasure Method of Teaching Notetaking" by Barbara Jansen. Teach students to distinguish between summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting. Basic Activities: accuracy, relevance and comprehensiveness Analyze the use of statistics in "The Dangers of Bread." What is the relationship between the statistics and the author's conclusions? (See especially #12.) |
Basic
Activities: bibliographic citations
Make sure students understand correct bibliographical format. It is
as important to correctly cite Internet sources as traditional print sources.
OWL (Online
Writing Lab) at Purdue University provides current updates to APA
(American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) Style
with detailed examples. Students like to use an interactive web tool: the Citation
Machine or Citation
Maker.
Advanced Activities: identify point of view
Compare two web sites about scientific research:
JunkScience: "all the junk that's
fit to debunk"
Commentary on "JunkScience" from SourceWatch:
a project of the Center for Media and Democracy.
Both of these sites feature strongly worded opinions; what do you think?
Basic
Activities: critical thinking Encourage the development of critical thinking skills in your Internet research projects. In addition to evaluating web resources, students should be engaged in evaluating their own thinking process and applying the information they gather to authentic challenging tasks. Strategy List: 35 Dimensions of Critical Thought |
Basic
Activities: appropriate product
Student presentations should be appropriate to their topics and their audiences.
What will be the most effective format to demonstrate what they have learned?
Examine Doug Johnson's "Plagiarism-proofing assignments" for ideas.
Look at NASA's Classroom of the Future Modules for examples of problem-based learning. Adapt Project Based Learning checklists to guide your students.
Well-designed Web Quests encourage collaborative learning, the thoughtful analysis of Web resources, and the creation of original products. See Tom March's description of "What WebQuests (Really) Are".
Advanced
Activities: classroom applications
Look at K-12 Strategies & Samples from the Center for Critical Thinking.
Basic Activity: assessment rubrics
Select from Kathy Schrock's collection of Assessment and Rubric Information to evaluate student projects, including web pages, research papers, multimedia and group presentations.
See also MidLink Magazine's Rubrics and Evaluation Resources.
Advanced
Activity:
Use RubiStar to customize your rubric from a template.
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Big6 aligned with Common Core Standards |
Big6 aligned with ICT Literacy Standards |
For a more detailed explication of Big6 Skills and their application to technology,
read Information, Communications, and Technology (ICT) Skills Curriculum Based on the Big6 Skills Approach to Information Problem-Solving by Mike Eisenberg, Doug Johnson , and Bob Berkowitz [PDF] (updated February 2010). For more links see "Online
Resources to Support Big6 Information Skills."
Big6 Matrix: Use the Internet with Big6 Skills to Achieve Standards designed by Janet Murray, May, 1999. Published in the Big6 eNewsletter, Winter, 2000, and Book Report, November/December, 2000. Presented at the Big6 Conference, August, 2001.
Incorporated ISTE NETS and updated January, 2002. Presented at NECC2002. Published in Big6 eNewsletter, Spring 2002, Book Report, September/October 2002, and TechTrends, January/February 2003. Incorporated new NETS standards August, 2007; incorporated new AASL Standards, November, 2007. Last updated October, 2015.
Achieving Educational Standards Using the Big6 Linworth Publications. 2008.
"Big6"
is trademarked by Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert E. Berkowitz, © 1987.
"Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" are © 2007, American
Library Association.
"National Educational Technology Standards for Students, Second Edition" are © 2007,
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Now known as ISTE Standards.