Creating Internet Inquiry Units

I am looking forward to seeing the projects my high school students will soon be creating in an internet inquiry unit. I created the unit as part of EDUC 6712, Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom, a course through Walden University. The students should grow in both inquiry skills and content literacy through this unit. Of course, while creating the unit, I also gained insight into the process of teaching new literacy skills.

Perhaps most striking is the amount of guidance students need as they learn new literacy skills, especially locating relevant information, critically evaluating information, and synthesizing ideas. Although students are generally familiar with the technology, most need guidance in using it efficiently because today’s resources are vast, complex, inconsistent, sometimes manipulative, and constantly changing. Further, it is left to the user, rather than an editor, to evaluate the reliability of resources (Coiro, 2003), so students need explicit instruction in these areas.

For example, two weeks ago I asked my high school students to evaluate the reliability of several bogus websites. In many cases, the students were able to offer only two reasons for doubting the veracity of a site: it did not make sense, and the photos were blurry. After a lesson on this skill, most students were able to suggest other avenues to investigate, such as domain name, information about the author or sponsor, ability to contact the author or sponsor, and back links to reliable sites (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007; November, 2008).

Similarly, many students need guidance in locating information. When trying to locate information on the internet, these students will usually open Google, without considering any other search engines, and type a question in natural English, rather than using a topic and focus strategy (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p. 135) or something similar. When a list of results is returned, they randomly select one to read, rather than looking at the description or the URL.

For any inquiry-based project to be successful, students will need instruction in the techniques that will make their work efficient. Obviously this will be an important focus in my teaching when my students do projects that involve new literacy skills.

Knowing this, I will be ready to include more inquiry-based projects in my own teaching. In the past, I had been frustrated because students conducted inefficient searches and failed to adequately synthesize new ideas; instead, they tended to parrot back information from one or two sources. Now I know that formulating important questions is an important first step in the process (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004), leading to more usable results, so I will plan for instruction in this area, as well as in finding, evaluating, and synthesizing information. Of course, after students have learned these skills, subsequent projects will need only to review them, so this instruction will take less time.

A goal for my own professional development is to create a website that will be a resource for my students. Like my students, I will be finding resources, synthesizing, and sharing. I would like it to include information about each class, such as assignments and due dates; links to valuable resources, such as the Creative Commons search page and Citation Machine; links to fun educational sites, such as Gamequarium and Spelling City, for my middle school students; and my contact information. Further, I would like to include samples of outstanding student work and photos of classroom activities.

I can easily set up a web page through any of several sites that offer free web pages. To make it successful, though, I will need to plan a few minutes each day for updating the site. Adding photos will require some extra time because I will need to be sure to have parents’/guardians’ permission to include their students. The most time consuming part will be posting examples of student work because these will have to be scanned and saved before they can be uploaded.

I would also like to learn to use cell phones for student participation in class discussion; students text their responses to the teacher. I have heard of teachers in other schools doing this, but I do not know exactly how they accomplish it, so I will need to investigate this possibility. I will need to learn how teachers make sure students are not engaged in private conversations during class time. Using cell phones this way would take advantage of the fact that, as Warlick notes (Laureate Education, 2009), students are bringing technology to school with them.

For the foreseeable future, technology will continue to expand out students’ access to information. Although teachers cannot learn and teach every new technology as it becomes available, we can and should use some of the technologies to engage our students in learning and to help them prepare for life in the Information Age.

References

Coiro, J. L . (2003). Rethinking comprehension strategies to better prepare students for critically evaluating content on the Internet. New England Reading Association Journal, 39(2), 29–34.

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). It’s not about the technology. Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom. [Video recording]. Baltimore: Author.

Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J. L., & Cammack, D. W. (2004). Toward a theory of new literacies emerging from the internet and other information and communication technologies. In Ruddell, R.B. & Unrau, N.J., (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (5th ed.). (pp. 1570–1613). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.