The Ability to Find and Select Information
What Is This?
In a digital learning environment being able to find usable information and resources is essential. Navigating the digital information can quickly become overwhelming, especially when searching for very specific digital materials. To make effective use of time and effort during searches it is important for users to have experience with capable search tools and techniques.
Equally important for a digital information searcher is to be skillful at identifying usable digital materials when arriving upon them. It is one thing to have the digital literacy skills to seek and source materials, but much effort can be for naught if the user's literacy skills don't allow for careful scrutiny once potential materials are found.
Classroom Applications - What might this look like?
These skills of searching, sourcing, and critically evaluating materials is perfectly suited for the school teacher-librarian to assist the classroom teacher with, or deliver themselves. There are supporting documents that have been developed by provincial teacher-librarian associations and provincial Ministries of Education, and these can be found below in the Resources section.
According to a document prepared by the BCTLA, graduating secondary students are lacking specific research skills, and must develop them to survive in post secondary endeavours. The document suggests that too few graduating high school students are able to navigate a bricks-and-mortar library, differentiate between different information sources, properly define plagiarism or citations, and make a proper citation.
Activities that require students to work through developing the skills of finding information can be done in tandem with expectations of critical evaluation for selecting information. Teaching methods to achieve this in the classroom can be found within the supporting resources below, but a thorough starting point that addresses how to do this through K-12 can be found here.
Teacher and Student Resources - Finding and Assessing Information
1) Web Literacy Resources - An excellent resource for teachers to self-assess their own web literacy. There are also resources for learning to assess web content for validity, and other resources for teaching web literacy in the classroom.
2) Evaluating Web Content - A guide, and thorough links to further information on assessing and evaluating the authenticity / usability of web content.
3) Google Guide - An unaffiliated web based utility offering advice, tips, and tricks for novice, advanced, and teen users of the Google search engine.
4) Picking Search Terms - A slide show tutorial demonstrating how adjusting search terms can drastically change the results.
5) List of General Search Engines
6) List of Academic Databases and Search Engines
In a digital learning environment being able to find usable information and resources is essential. Navigating the digital information can quickly become overwhelming, especially when searching for very specific digital materials. To make effective use of time and effort during searches it is important for users to have experience with capable search tools and techniques.
Equally important for a digital information searcher is to be skillful at identifying usable digital materials when arriving upon them. It is one thing to have the digital literacy skills to seek and source materials, but much effort can be for naught if the user's literacy skills don't allow for careful scrutiny once potential materials are found.
Classroom Applications - What might this look like?
These skills of searching, sourcing, and critically evaluating materials is perfectly suited for the school teacher-librarian to assist the classroom teacher with, or deliver themselves. There are supporting documents that have been developed by provincial teacher-librarian associations and provincial Ministries of Education, and these can be found below in the Resources section.
According to a document prepared by the BCTLA, graduating secondary students are lacking specific research skills, and must develop them to survive in post secondary endeavours. The document suggests that too few graduating high school students are able to navigate a bricks-and-mortar library, differentiate between different information sources, properly define plagiarism or citations, and make a proper citation.
Activities that require students to work through developing the skills of finding information can be done in tandem with expectations of critical evaluation for selecting information. Teaching methods to achieve this in the classroom can be found within the supporting resources below, but a thorough starting point that addresses how to do this through K-12 can be found here.
Teacher and Student Resources - Finding and Assessing Information
1) Web Literacy Resources - An excellent resource for teachers to self-assess their own web literacy. There are also resources for learning to assess web content for validity, and other resources for teaching web literacy in the classroom.
2) Evaluating Web Content - A guide, and thorough links to further information on assessing and evaluating the authenticity / usability of web content.
3) Google Guide - An unaffiliated web based utility offering advice, tips, and tricks for novice, advanced, and teen users of the Google search engine.
4) Picking Search Terms - A slide show tutorial demonstrating how adjusting search terms can drastically change the results.
5) List of General Search Engines
6) List of Academic Databases and Search Engines