The answer to my Diigo searching...

Well I'm still not convinced that it is a good tactic for me to use Diigo to try and keep track of my searching. I have found that because most of my 'good' resources are from subscription databases I can't use Diigo to track these (as I suspected). Also the notes don't pop up easily, you have to click through the entries to find what you need.

My low tech, new approach is to open a word document and write myself a short list of notes that has the number of hits, the search terms used, where I was searching and whether or not I thought the search was successful or not.

I will post the results of this research in the coming couple of weeks.

Kuhlthau's ISP

I'm starting to form some clarity now that I have found some good journal articles as well websites to enhance my learning. I still feel a bit anxious with the amount of information and also about the lack of good History specific resources. With a bit more searching i think I will be ready to start collating my information and forming my key arguments.

Feelings- Anxious still but also starting to see my knowledge grow.
Thoughts- Getting more focused
Actions- Still exploring but documenting the whole process along the way.

Questionnaire 2

1. Take some time to think about your topic. Now write down what you know about it.
I have a deeper understanding of the variety of different Information models out there. My understanding of inquiry based learning is also greater, particularly since I have had the opportunity to put it into practice.

2. How interested are you in this topic? Circle the answer that best matches your interest. Not at all not much quite a bit a great deal

3. How much do you know about this topic? Circle the answer that best matches how much you know.Nothing not much quite a bit a great deal

4. When you do research, what do you generally find easy to do? Please list as many things as you like.
I find it easy to find lots of general resources, I still find it harder to find specific topic related materials. I am better now at knowing which journals will provide the best education material.

5. When you do research, what do you generally find difficult to do? Please list as many things as you like.I find it difficult to have successful 'hits' immediately it is still very time consuming for me to go through the many avenue's available. It is still very much about perseverance. I also find it difficult to record my findings in a consistent easy to sift through manner.

Academic Journal searching A+ Education

My first search string looked like this. As always I tick the boxes that will allow me to search through a specific date range so I don't get really old hit. I also only want full text records and where applicable peer reviewed academic articles only.

I thought I would attack this by starting narrow and then widening out the search if need be. I got 237 hits but the only term that seems to appear is ‘social science’ so I will try another plan of attack. Hmm okay I know what I did wrong, the ‘or’ applied to all the search functions not just the history or social science.

The next search where I took out the subject specific terms and just left in information inquiry learning and middle school got No hits.

Try again... this time I just tried ‘inquiry’ instead of the whole term  ‘inquiry based learning’ . Returned 2 results. Neither of them are very useful.

This time, no middle school and just inquiry and history- many more hits this time. I got 98 and found one good article specific to history.

I think that by adding in my specific area I am limiting some good resources that will develop my knowledge of inquiry based learning. This time I just put in inquiry based learning but left the full text ticked and also the date range of 1990 – 2010. I got 69 hits but there are a few good articles in this bunch. 

Now off to read them all and see if they can be used.

Google Scholar search

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The poster above also came from the Google Teacher Librarian blog mentioned in the entry 'Basic Google Search'.

“inquiry based learning” “middle school” “social science” – 1950 hits – not relevant hits I am getting a lot of hits for science specific sources.

“inquiry based learning” “middle school” history – 1430 hits. I’m still getting a lot of hits for science but also hits for ‘the history of...’. Nothing appropriate.

“inquiry based learning” “middle school’ history –science= 41 hits, there is some useful things in here. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/pdf/chapter1/1.51a.pdf looks really interesting.

I came across an interesting slide show from a professor at QUT about the national curriculum and history. Although it’s interesting it doesn’t really fit what I am looking for specifically. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/34432/1/34432.pdf

I think I will move onto academic journals now as I know I will get some good results there.

Google wonder wheel

Playing with Google Wonder Wheel was really fun. It was good to see the branches of thought. I thought I would try a different search term for this and use the term “guided inquiry” and clicked on a number of different branches to see if there were many useful resources.

When I clicked on the choice for Ross Todd I found some good information including the following power point document tldl.pbworks.com/f/Ross+Todd+Guided+Inquiry+Web+2.0.ppt.

Ross Todd Guided Inquiry Web 2.0

There was also a great slideshow constructed for the Victorian School Library Association www.slav.schools.net.au/downloads/06publications/transinf.pps  that went through a variety of models.

The inquiring mind site http://www.inquiringmind.co.nz/index.htm also had some great resources with a good overview of further reading on its resource tab.

Overall I found some great resources which has helped me to shape my understanding.

Will using Diigo to keep track of the research process work?

As I have been stealing moments before and after work looking for appropriate research material I have been using Diigo to keep track of my bookmarks and annotated pages. I have been keeping track of how many hits I get based on the criteria entered and have put this information in the notes section. Here's hoping that when I collate all the information on the weekend it still makes sense. Will this approach work? It certainly doesn't work for CMD readings as these are protected files when you click on the link it takes you back to the log in screen and not that reading, the same applies for journal researching through the library. I have had to record these separately. Stay tuned more to come on this.....


Kuhlthau's ISP

Exploration mode- I am starting to find some resources that are useful so I'm feeling a little bit more optimistic about that but still feel worried that I won't be able to find great resources. I'm noticing that many of the key terms that I am searching for have been used interchangeably by different people which is a bit confusing. Luckily I have our Kuhlthau text to help me feel centered.

Thoughts- still vague but getting more centered.

Basic Google search

Educators_11x85

One great thing I found was this posters for Teacher Librarians and Educators to use which I sourced from the blog by Google called the librarian central http://librariancentral.blogspot.com/


They also had this great poster which shows really clearly basic Boolean search techniques.


Tips_Tricks_17x22

See below for some of the searches that I did and the success that I had ( or didn't as the case may be)

Inquiry based learning- 6,730000 results in 0.07 seconds

“inquiry based learning” “medieval Europe” 439 results 0.15 seconds - there were no age appropriate resources

“inquiry based learning” Medieval Europe” “Middle School” 126 results in 0.11 seconds – this got no good results, it was all documents about curriculum planning for American schools.

“inquiry based learning” history “middle school” 27,100 results in 0.17 seconds- although there were a lot of hits I finally found something that looked good. There was one useful website that had good links to further reading on other websites and articles. http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index.html Thirteen Ed online. It had resources on planning inquiry units of work as well as some clear definitions. The rest of the sites however seemed to be more focused on Science units of work. I will try and put in the American subject term for history which is social science and see if I come up with more hits.

“Inquiry based learning” “social science” “middle school” came up with 3,440 results in 0.38 seconds- there wasn’t anything of interest  here, it just came up with a whole bunch of lessons plans that didn’t suit what I was searching for. There were however a range of academic papers that appeared through this search that looked like they could be interesting but could not access the full text version, I will use the libraries journal database subsctiptions for this.

“inquiry based learning” “social science” – 8,810 in 0.32 seconds -found the questioning tool kit http://www.fromnowon.org/nov97/toolkit.html which was useful even though it was aimed at a tertiary level not middle school.

“guided inquiry” this search found 45,400 results in 0.13 seconds. The hits were a lot more applicable to sorts of resources I was looking for. Perhaps because guided inquiry is a more structured model of inquiry based learning it is a lot easier to find information relevant to my needs.

Information search models 88,500,000 in 0.31 seconds

“information search models” 6,710 in .38 seconds

“information literacy model” 44,200 – There were some great hits in this search.

http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/infolitmod/ has a really good overview of HEAPS of different models.

The rest of the sources are a confused bunch. There seems to be a lot of competing information about what information literacy, critical literacy and inquiry learning are. The terms seem to get interchanged when it’s not really appropriate.

Confession

I have a confession to make, when I started this task I did what many of my students do and jumped right in without thinking through the task. As such my first search was in standard Google and was looking for inquiry based learning + medieval Europe. Surprisingly I found a few useful resources, not very surprisingly I got 71,300 hits.

It wasn't until later in the week that I realised that I should have started much more broadly with 'history' and 'middle school learners', instead of jumping right in with such a specific topic.

It's important to note that I didn't expect to find anything useful at all using the standard Google search. I expected to find a few resources posted by teachers including activities but didn't expect to find any research literature. The second hit was a research paper that had some good points. The focus of the paper is on Primary schools but had some fairly good points in regards to planning inquiry based units of work and building questioning in the classroom. It has a small section on teaching about Rome which is why it would have come up.

Liked- the teacher used the term 'exploratorium' as a word to describe her classroom when she had filled it with stimulus for particular units of work.

Didn't like so much- lack of grounding in current literature and also I felt that this teacher had too many pre-conceived expectations about the 'product' which would limit the imaginations of her kids.

Copy of the paper-  http://reflectingeducation.net/index.php?journal=reflecting&page=article&op=viewPDFInterstitial&path[]=23&path[]=24

The diagram above equates 1) enduring understandings as pre-knowledge of the students so the teacher knows what the pre- existing knowledge base of the students are.
2) Central idea- what is the main topic that the class will be exploring?
3) Summative assessment- What have the students learnt so far, what further instruction may they need to come to their own conclusions?
4) Instructional activities- Scaffolding from the teacher to help students reach those higher order thoughts.
5) Formative assessments- Did the students reach the desired level of knowledge?

 Although I don't intend to use this paper as part of my research review as I feel it lacks real substance and doesn't discuss any recent literature of inquiry based learning, it was still interesting to see what can pop up in a normal google search.

 Kuhlthau's ISP model-
For the initiation aspect of this task I was off with flying colours and I had a really good idea already about the types of things I should be looking for. The readings that Mandy had given us helped me to zone in on the kinds of appropriate resources and 'key words' I should be looking for but I'm still having to look too closely at resources before I keep or discard them.

My focus has been selected but I'm not feeling the optimism that Kuhlthau's model outlines. I think that I'm all too aware of the amount of work that lies ahead.

Exploration- this has really only started

Feelings- are definitely Uncertain (read, petrified at how much needs to be done).
Thoughts- vague is a good description of my thoughts, I think that I will need to read each resource fairly deeply at the moment before I know whether or not it 'fits' my middle school and history area well enough to be useful.
Actions- searching, searching, searching, reading, reading, reading!

Research activity tweaked

Okay so the research activity has been tweaked. Just after I posted the activity idea the teacher I'm working with was handed the actual assessment task. We can still do all of the wonderful inquiry research components but the students now have to make a 3D model of an object (person, place, war, weaponry etc.)

This is a little bit limiting compared to the original idea as the students won't get to draw on their personal interests with how they wish to present their research so they are a little bit more constrained in regards to the higher order thinking skills. I'm convinced that it will still be most excellent and enjoyable for the students and teachers. I will post a copy of the task and marking criteria when I get my hot little hands on it.

history_task_3_log_book_template_3_ -



2010_history_model_task -

Research Activity

Briefly explain the information-learning activity you are planning to use for the project

• Year 8 are studying Medieval Europe in history.
• The unit requires them to learn about architecture, government , religion, trade, warfare, health and important people.

• The students will be able to select an area or person that interests them and then provide evidence in whatever format they choose about how we can see the legacy of that area of research in our lives today.

• Students will get final approval from their teacher in regards to study area and final product format.

• Some of the ways they may wish to present their findings are: short story, play, rap, web page, film, photo essay with speech, visual display, animation, essay.

• when the activity will run and for how long- starting week 4 (next week is week 3) and running for 6 lessons/ 3 weeks.

• the year level/grade level of the students, and. Year 8, 16 students. This is an elective history course, students are motivated and hardworking.

• the range of information they will be required to search for- variety of information pertaining to the individual interest of the students as above.

Questionaire 1

Reflection sheet - blog entry


1. Take some time to think about your topic. Now write down what you know about it.
I think that I still have limited understanding of Guided Inquiry and how to use it with my students for deep understanding. I have good knowledge of what information literacy is and general search techniques due to my studies in 'Hubs' and also 'Professional Applications of Research'. I know that it is process where there are levels of research and understanding and that students need to practice the lower levels to gain competence and understanding before they can move to the higher levels of research and understanding. The teacher is there to scaffold their learning so that the students can go beyond just finding answers to developing their own research questions and developing greater understanding.



2. How interested are you in this topic? Circle the answer that best matches your interest.

Not at all not much quite a bit a great deal

3. How much do you know about this topic? Circle the answer that best matches how much you know.

Nothing not much quite a bit a great deal

4. When you do research, what do you generally find easy to do? Please list as many things as you like.

When I start research I find it easy to analyse the initial question so that I know what I should be looking for. Over the past year I have found it easier to find information as I have learnt how to ascertain whether or not a website is reputable or not. I have also grown my PLN (personal learning network) and as such have been guided towards fantastic resources from my peers. I first use Google and have a play with the wonder wheel and scholar. I then use journal articles and often when I find a good journal I use that resource list to widen my reading. I have been using Boolean operators but have found varied success with this depending on my topic area and where I am searching.


5. When you do research, what do you generally find difficult to do? Please list as many things as you like.

The thing that I find most difficult is organising my information. Much to my husbands despair I have piles of readings and journals around my desk that answer a specific part of my research. I find it hard reading through lots of text on the screen so I tend to print out ones I know will be useful and highlighting the sections that are most useful. If I already have my essay outline and know what I'm going to write I will code the readings so I can rearrange my piles by paragraph and knowledge chunks. I have started to use Microsoft one note to organise my readings and notes on them but I am still learning to use it well.

To Begin

This is almost like opening up a fresh journal to the first crisp page, full of promise and new beginnings. This blog however makes me much more nervous as it's not a place to secret away my dreams and desires but instead a public platform where my fellow Nexus buddies and Mandy can get a look inside the process of learning in my head. Eeeek!

I implore all of you reading my blog to feel free to post a comment, after all, it's much more fun with friends!