Protected: ETL501 Critical Reflection
categories: ETL501 The Dynamic Information Environment
October 2019 archive
Beyond the tip of the digital iceberg
categories: ETL501 The Dynamic Information Environment
Harris discusses how we live in an era of “information saturation” and that “the proliferation of low-quality content is the latest, possibly greatest threat to student researchers” (2011, p.31). This has implications for teachers and teacher librarians (TLs) when guiding students through the research process. Lederman (2016 ) discusses the importance of educating students about the three layers of the web and teaching them how to access the second layer, the deep web, which includes databases and subscriptions to online encyclopedias and reliable research information. I have seen many versions of this image below and like using it with staff and students.
Lederman (2016)
My practice has focussed on directing students to the deep web, with our school subscriptions, and I blogged about this in Physical and digital formats for reference material. I work with staff to try and embed the use of our online encyclopaedias Britannica and Pebble Go and we are currently trialling BrainPop.
Despite this direction, most students (and teachers!) will continue to default to Google when searching and therefore it is very important to teach them how to use google well. This includes teaching them how to use tools to modify the date content was published and to use advanced settings. They need to be taught how to use keywords, how to do advanced searches, how to skim and scan and how to identify bias. This will ensure they are not just using the web superficially. Many will also continue to use Wikipedia as a reference source. I wrote about my shift in thinking regarding this in To Wiki or to not Wiki?
It is also important to introduce staff and students to a web evaluation tool such as the ones I included in the blog, Reading V’s Understanding. Through this subject I also learnt that there is no such thing as the wrong search engine, it just may be that one search engine is better for a particular search.
In ETL501 I have found some interesting tools that I wanted to share here as a record of places to come back to.
Goog A Who is useful to compare results from two different search engines.
Duck Duck Go is a safer search engine without advertising.
Sweet Search is a search engine for students created by librarians.
Finding Dulcinea is a search which only searches and finds high quality and trustworthy websites.
And that is just the very tip of the iceberg!
References
Harris, F.J. (2011). The school librarian as information specialist: A vibrant species. Knowledge Quest, 39(5), 28-32. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=61819926&site=ehost-live
Lederman, A. (2016). Google just gets to the tip of the iceberg: How to get to the gems in the deep web. Refer, 32(2), 16-20. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/docview/1803449019?accountid=10344
Reading V’s Understanding
categories: ETL501 The Dynamic Information Environment
How much information do our students understand when they read online? I am often speaking to the students about not using google as their first place to go when researching. All students should be taught a web evaluation tool and Kathy Shrock’s 5W’s of website evaluation is suitable for primary aged students and the CRAP test is great for older students.
Another important element of evaluation websites is to assess the readability of websites. There was an activity in ETL501 module two where we were required to use readability software to test the reading level of different content. I had never used a tool like this before and think they are really useful and am quite excited by this new tool in my learning kit. In fact, I am writing about it in this post so that I can share this with the staff. Four such tools are:
With all of them, you can cut and paste part of a text and it will scan the text and provide scores using readability indicators. These include the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level which tells you the American school grade you would need to be in to comprehend the text and the Gunning Fog Score which estimates the years of formal education needed to comprehend a text. I have explored these tools with lots of different texts and find them a useful guide for finding age appropriate content. I found it very surprising how high some of the results came back with paragraphs from Wikipedia (often a student’s first search result) scoring reading comprehension results suitable for 24 year olds. I even used them with some articles from Britannica in the different levels and some text in the easiest level was coming back as being suitable for year 7s! It has made me think again and how challenging reading online can be for some of our students. It also made me reflect again on the importance of sharing tools with students that have audio support and ones with videos.
It is worth raising that the results were not all consistent with each other. I found WebFX the easiest to use and it is also completely free. It allows you to cut and paste part of a text or to add in a URL and it will test the whole site. The fact that the same piece of text in the different tools would come back with different reading ages really highlights the importance of teacher librarians and teachers curating resources to guide students when researching. This is one tool that can be used to help, but teacher support is clearly something that really needs to take place to support students in developing information literacy skills.
References
Mitchell, P. (2017). Critical thinking tool – the CRAP test. Teacher. Retrieved from https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/critical-thinking-tools-the-crap-test
Online Utility (2009). Readability calculator. Retrieved from https://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp
Readable. (2019). The Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Retrieved from https://readable.com/blog/the-flesch-reading-ease-and-flesch-kincaid-grade-level/
Schrock. K. (2009). The 5W’s of website evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.schrockguide.net/uploads/3/9/2/2/392267/5ws.pdf