Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Module Five Notes


The focus of Module Five is Research and Information Fluency

The morning opened with an Animoto video review of the group's activities during Module 3 & 4. Following that, participants worked on developing their own Animoto video, using photograph of Stevenson Middle School and Robert Louis Stevenson that Micheline had shared with them by posting to to Google Docs.

Micheline reviewed the key objectives of Modules Five and Six and provided participants with copies of an article by Alan November called "Teaching Zack to Think." The instructors shared resources that can be used to help students evaluate the validity and reliability of information they find on the World Wide Web.

Key criteria to consider:
Authority
Accuracy
Objectivity
Currency
Coverage

The teachers spent some time viewing a website about Martin Luther King and using the key criteria to judge the validity of the site.

The next portion of the workshop focused on search strategies, with instructors demonstrating advanced search strategies in Google. An excellent "cheat sheet" supporting search strategies is available at online at Google Help.

Sara also introduced the group to Boolify, as search tool designed for student use.

Teachers spent time practicing search strategies, with a focus on their curriculum projects. They also practiced using Google's translation tools.

Prior to the break, presenters shared some of the Animoto videos created by the teachers during the first hour.

Following a short break, teachers talked in table groups about ideas to increase parent engagement. Each group generated a list of ideas in a Google Doc, which the presenters merged into a single list.

The group then began looking at issues of copyright and fair use, beginning by taking a copyright quiz. They also learned how to use David Warlick's Citation Machine to site websites as resources.









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