Online Research Habitudes
Inspiring Curiosity, Persistence & Adaptability in Students
5 Major Points of My Webinar
1. Students must be technologically literate to be able to research properly. Students must be aware of what tools to use and how to use them to effectively research.
2. We must inspire curiosity, perseverance and adaptability into students in order for them to be habitually effective researchers. It is our job as teachers to not only teach these characteristics, but also inspire these characteristics in our lessons.
3. Curiosity- It is extremely important to teach students how to ask the right questions in order to research effectively. If a student can create a question, then it allows them to hone in exactly what they want to research and it will make researching easier.
4. Persistence- Teach kids persistence is not giving up when you can’t find information from your one key word, but keep switching your key words up and you may be able to find it. Always keep in mind terms that is used by the culture and time period you are researching. It may be different than what you remember. Think about how searching for Native Americans would bring your different results than searching for Indians.
5. Adaptability- No single search strategy is perfect. Sometimes you have to adapt to the research question or subject in order to effectively search. Sometimes you can search and find just by a simple key word, sometimes you need to do an advanced search, sometimes you need to use a completely different search engine or an academic engine.
My Reflection on the Webinar
Overall, I thought the webinar was pretty interesting. It really seems to focus on the ideas of building a 21st century in the idea that we are not only to inspire students to be curious, but also giving them the ability to be independent. We grant them their independence by teaching them to be technology literate when it comes to proper research habits. I thought they gave great tips on how to improve students search skills.
I liked the idea that there are good “Online Research Habitudes” that can be taught in order to create a 21st century learner. In fact, I focused my major points around those three ideas in order to show the significance of them.
While I liked the information presented in the webinar, at times I felt the pace of it was too slow and while the lecturers didn’t go off topic, they seem to go into too much detail and caused me to lose focus. I also didn’t like how sometimes the presenters would just randomly skip through slides. I think this was caused by lecturing too much on certain areas that they didn’t plan to and caused them to skip slides in order to catch up on time. Overall, I thought the presentation was great, but there would be a few things that could be fixed through more practice as presenters.
Secondary Resources!
I decided to focus my 3 resources on the three major points of the video. So, my resources focus on curiosity (asking good questions), persistence (not quitting after poor search results) and adaptability (using different research techniques).
Curiosity
This video does a great job in showing us an activity that can be used to teach students how to create better questions. Also, I enjoy how it explains that teachers shouldn’t have all the power in a student’s education, part of the education process is students taking control of their own education and by creating effective questions on their own, it gives students power. I also was excited that the age group that this activity was used in wasn’t some high school setting, but one of younger learners, which shows that this technique isn’t age restricted. My department often struggles with the idea of how to effectively use a Frayer model, but this activity seemed like a great use of it.
Persistence
This video showcases a lesson that tries to teach students how keywords affect a search. It also explains to students how big a role vocabulary plays into searching. I really liked the idea of using a word game, almost like taboo, to help students actually use a variety of words in order to describe or “discover” their subject. It also gives activities where students learn to collaborate with other students, another key element in being a 21st century learner. I think this video gives a solid idea of what it takes to create a learner who is persistent in researching and not a learner who uses one key word or phrase and then quits
Adaptability
http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml
This website is an amazing resource because it focuses on teaching students how to effectively search. It also talks about different ways to search. I found this website effective because students can click on the lessons that apply to them and they can choose what material they need. It is “learner oriented” and allows the learner to be in charge of their material.