We had another great Parent Technology Coffee Morning last week! We started by watching another video called Information R/Evolution, by Kansas State University professor, Michael Wesch:
The video demonstrates the different ways that we are able to access, use and create information in the digital age. Professor Wesch focuses on the needs of our students learning in this digital world, compared to our own experiences with more traditional management of paper-based information. As you might expect, this video prompted some interesting discussion. Here are a few highlights:
- First and foremost we discussed the need for students to learn how to filter the massive amounts of information that we all have at our fingertips for everything from accuracy to bias to relevance to date of publication.
- We talked about the need for students to be not only seekers of information, but also content creators. Their world revolves around creation (think YouTube), we need to be providing these same kinds of experiences in the classroom to teach them how to appropriately use these tools for educational purposes.
- Jeff shared some effective searching strategies for using Google more effectively. You can watch a short video of similar (plus more!) very easy, very effective searching tips directly from Google, or download this one-page help sheet.
We also spent some time introducing our new library catalog system, Destiny. Tara shared some special tricks on how to do a visual search (perfect for our younger learners), as well as how to search the pre-screened websites (organized by age-level appropriateness) called WebPath Express, that comes as part of the Destiny catalog.
Thank you to all of the parents who took time out of their busy day to attend this monthly session! We so enjoy learning with you and sharing new and exciting ideas from our ISB 21st Century Literacy Team!
Our next meeting will be February 4, 2009 at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Topic: Social Networking: This session will be an introduction to the uses of social networking in the classroom, as well as a demonstration of some of the social networks that our students regularly use (for example Club Penguin).
We hope to see you there!
