Transitioning from Knowledge to Synthesis: Reflection

There is no doubt that we are living in a world gripped by technology. Successful technology tools and applications have the ability to generate impressive results for our digital natives. However, even with all of the wonderful advances in technology, we must be sure our students do not loose sight of the importance of traditional literacy skills. “Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom” has provided ways to engage students in their learning in ways that stimulate them by infusing lessons with technology and skills that our students need in today’s ever-changing world. This course helped restore my appreciation for the new literacy skills in a remarkable way as it provided exposure to new strategies to help students to question, search, evaluate, synthesize, and effectively communicate information like never before (Laureate Education, 2009). In the 21st century one must encompass the traditional literacy skills such as reading, writing, and speaking as well as the new literacy skills that include listening skills, information skills, technical skills, media skills, personal skills, cooperative skills, and professional skills (Jukes, 2001).

Time and again I assumed that because students have ample experience with the internet and other technologies that they were capable of navigating the web and locating, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating information. The truth is that it can be very difficult to locate valid information and make sense of it. The screen capture application during week five in this course provided me with a great tool to model appropriate steps to locate information. Students can too often become lost in the surplus of information available to them. Screen casting has already become apart of my teaching practice. This tool, as well as others offered in the resources provided by this course, will help facilitate the adoption of these practices for my students to exhibit safe and ethical technology use and proper literacy skills.

I plan to incorporate more inquiry-based learning activities and projects into my health class. I believe that students will benefit by investigating health issues on their own through developing essential questions, locating and evaluating resources related to their research questions, synthesizing that information, and communicating the results effectively. Prior to this course, I have had experience with inquiry-based projects but have not had huge success with them. For future projects, I plan to utilize the strategies outlined in Eagleton and Dobler’s, “Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet Inquiry”. I am the only health educator in my school, I would like to reach out and collaborate with other health teachers in the county to create an inquiry-based lesson for each of our units of health such as nutrition, mental health, consumer health, and family life. “We would be doing students a disservice by not preparing them to apply the inquiry process to the world’s most massive source of information, one that will impact their future daily lives in ways we cannot even imagine” (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p.281).













References

Eagleton, M., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web. New York, NY: The Guilford Press

Jukes, I. (2007). 21st century fluency skills: Attributes of a 21st century learner. Retrieved from http://www.committedsardine.com/handouts/twca/pdf

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). New literacy’s. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: Author.