Information Literacy and Online Inquiry

The most striking revelation of this course is that everything my students and I need to develop the new information literacy and conduct an inquiry unit is online and free for use as part of the Web 2.0 tool set. Social networking skills can be developed using sites like blogs, VoiceThread, etc. with the added advantage that a complete unit can just about be accomplished outside of the classroom. Peer and teacher input and assessment can occur using these sites during the development of the inquiry unit, particularly for sharing search experiences and fruitful sites with peers. Synthesis of online information can be done digitally and shared with peers using concept mapping tools such as Webspiration. Convincing multimedia PowerPoints can also be created and shared online, serving as the culmination of the online inquiry. About the only portion of the whole unit that might require physical proximity in the classroom would be the presentations of the inquiry results to peers in a live setting – this to give students the experience of a non-digital audience, complete with non-digital questions and responses.

Since computer access in my building is very limited, and with budget cuts does not appear to be improving in the near future, and furthermore, since almost all of my students have Internet access from home, I think I can develop some out-of-class assignments that are both collaborative and independent, and of an inquiry nature. The unit I developed for this course, The Particle Adventure, serves as a model for such units.

My immediate professional development goal that builds upon this course and my need for information literacy and technology skills is to master Webspiration and VoiceThread. These will be the two most useful Web 2.0 tools for synthesis of online inquiry information and for collaboration and assessment of my students in the virtual sphere. Working out the bugs (mine) using basic lessons will probably be my method of attack. From there I will progress to doing a genuine inquiry unit, conducted and presented online.