Category Archives: Uncategorized

What is a learning resource?  How do you evaluate a resource? Are students and teachers prepared for the constant need to critically examine the resources, both print and online, they use for teaching and learning?  Are you familiar with the terms of use of the new Copyright Modernization Act (2012)?  Do teachers educate themselves on these issues?  Whose advice would you seek if you needed advice on the use of a resource?  If a parent takes legal exception to how a resource or student assignment is used, who is accountable? How about the restrictions of FIPPA for BC students?  Issues about privacy protection, intellectual property rights, and corporate intrusion in education are compounded when you work with children.

The Ministry of Education explains what a learning resource is and when it can be considered a resource for use in BC classrooms:

Learning resources are texts, videos, software, and other materials that teachers use to assist students to meet the expectations for learning defined by provincial or local curricula.  Before a learning resource is used in a classroom, it must be evaluated and approved at either the provincial or local level.  Evaluation criteria may include curriculum fit social consideration, and age or developmental appropriateness.

ERAC (The Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium) is assigned to evaluate resources for BC school districts.  All resources used in BC classrooms must be reviewed, whether by ERAC or by some definable district- or school-based process.  Criteria for selection should be clear and comprehensive.  Different types of resources are evaluated using different criteria; however, all resources used in BC classrooms are expected to:

• support the curriculum
• help students make connections between school and their own experiences
• be developmentally and age appropriate
• support cross-curricular integration
• promote active and applied learning
• address differences in learning styles, cultures, and abilities
• assist specialist and classroom teachers
• provide strategies for assessment
• promote personal and intellectual development
• encourage career and post-secondary considerations
• support technology integration and media literacy
• encourage students to use current technology to access, evaluate, process, and present information
• promote awareness of social, scientific, and technological issues
• have integrity of instructional and technical design
• comply with Ministry guidelines for social considerations
• include diverse cultures, including aboriginal, in BC and Canada
• support the principles of sustainability (ERAC, n.p.)

Teacher professional judgment and autonomy generally constitute a less “formal review process” in schools.  Adding to department or grade level collections is a collaborative process of considering criteria listed above.  Teacher-librarians are trained in the selection of resources according to clear criteria to ensure that the library collection reflects balance.  Additional considerations might be:

• the level of coverage provided by the content; does it address the development and age levels of the school’s learners?
• the currency of the content and of the presentation of the resource; is it up-to-date?  does it look current?
• the “authority” of the resource: who wrote or sponsored the resource?  what is their level of authority for the topic?  what are their credentials? are they recognized experts?
• the relevance to curriculum and learning opportunities in the library/learning commons: does it fit the curriculum?
• the perspective of the material in addressing the topic: is the subject treated fairly?  does it add to the balance of perspectives on a particular topic?

READINGS:

As you read, build a list of criteria for evaluation that you will use for assignment 2.

Abilock, D. (2012). How can students know whether the information they find online is true – or not? Educational Leadership 69(6): 70-74.

Abram, S. (2012). THE PIPELINE – The new learning imperative: Social sharing and collaboration. Internet@schools

Badke, W. (2014). The convenience factor in information seeking. Online Searcher 38(6): 68-70.

Brooks-Kirkland, A. (2013). Teacher-librarians as content curators: Strong contexts, new possibilities. School Libraries in Canada 31(2): n.p.

Brooks-Kirkland, A. (2013).  Content curation. Scoop-it.

Education Resource Acquisition Consortium. (2008). Evaluating, selecting and acquiring learning resources: A guide.  Vancouver, BC: ERAC.

Ekdahl, M. (2008). Beyond Textbooks: Inquiry-based teaching for meaningful learning. UBC Presentation in SlidePlayer.

Ekdahl, M. (2010). Digital Resources: Access, Access, Access – Evaluating Digital Resources.  Blog. Vancouver, BC.

Ekdahl, M. (2012). FIPPA and the cloud: Issues for BC schools.  TL Special Weekly Report. Blog. Vancouver, BC.

Ekdahl, M. (2013). Copyright considerations.  TL Special Wiki. Vancouver, BC.

Hengstler, J. (2013). A K-12 primer for British Columbia teachers posting students’ work online.

Lamb, A. (2013). Electronic databases. Eduscapes: Electronic materials for children and young adults.

McRae, P. (2013). Rebirth of the teaching machine through the seduction of data analytics: This time it’s personal. Philip McRae, Ph. D. 7.

Noel, W. & J. Snel. (2012). Copyright matters!  Ottawa, ON: Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC), Canadian School Boards Association (CSBA), and Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF).

Prince Edward Island Department of Education. (2008). Evaluation and selection of learning resources: A guide.  Charlottetown, PE: Department of Education.

Valenza, J. (2012). Curation. School Library Monthly 29(1): 20-23.

Wikipedia. (2016). Citing Wikipedia.

Zmuda, A & V.H. Harada. (2008).  Looking to the future: Providing resources to support 21st century learning. Librarians as Learning Specialists: Meeting the learning imperative for the 21st century.  (103-115). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

The culture of the school and the community in which inquiry happens as well as the mindsets of its learners are important.

Ruth Deakin Crick, in a British study (2009), set aside pre-packaged curriculum and used her local community to offer students a journey of inquiry and personal growth; she offered them a curriculum of “local choice” based on their interests and experience.  Crick’s study explores the impact of the information age, of globalization, and of emerging technologies; the ways people experience the world have been forever changed.  Technology mediates learning, doling out life in pre-formatted ‘helpings,’ she suggests.  Old ways of knowing, linear and bounded, are being challenged, and people are “at the mercy of a software developer or video editor, mouse button or remote control.” Information itself is no longer enough: Know-how or “the ability to relate and harness information to identify and purpose, by personalising, adding value and meaning, redesigning, and re-presenting what is ‘known’ in new contexts” are the requisite skills for navigating and interacting with the Knowledge Society (76). Implicit in her argument is a sharp critique of the “factory system” of education where students lack agency and passively receive or consume information, a 20th century model that Crick links to the “command and control” economy.

Of the inquiry-based approach to community implemented in the study, Crick concludes that:

… personalised pedagogy challenges the traditional parameters of the lesson and subject-based curriculum, but rewards are found in terms of personalisation, that is, a pedagogy which takes the person who is learning as seriously as the learning outcome.  It is anchored in personal interest, rather than didactic intent, and it begins with experiential knowing, rather than propositional knowledge, opinion, or theory. It may appear on the surface to be a return to the child-centred pedagogies of the 1960s, in reaction to the overly prescribed knowledge-centred pedagogies of the 1990s.  The centre of balance, however, is nether the ‘child’ nor the ‘knowledge’: the focus is on the process of knowledge co-construction — and as such it is learner centred, rather … [it] integrates and reconciles the two. (88-90)

Acknowledging that there are major challenges in conceptualizing and enacting a personalized “inquiry-based” curriculum of this nature, Crick points to the expanded role of teachers as both content specialists and learning mentors with strong real-world connections, to the organization of schools in lessons, content areas, assessment, bricks-and-mortar, and times of year, and to the implications for leadership. Yet the study reveals:

… invaluable principles and practice that illuminate what is known about how learners can learn how to learn, and how that learning can be integral to their emerging life-narratives and the meta-narratives of society, thus creating a more sustainable form of pedagogy that stimulates personal and social transformation. (89)

Crick looked at inquiry and its capacity to make a difference to adolescents ranging from gifted to disenfranchised.  Her research team identified “seven dimensions of learning power”:

These dimensions, each comprising values, attitudes and dispositions are: changing and learning (a sense of oneself as someone who learns and changes over time); critical curiosity (an orientation to want to get beneath the surface’); meaning-making (making connections and seeing that learning ‘matters to me’); creativity (risk-taking, playfulness, imagination, and intuition); interdependence (learning with and from others and also being able to learn alone); strategic awareness (being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings and actions as a learner and able to use that awareness to manage learning processes); and resilience (the orientation to persevere in the development of one’s own learning power). (74)

Other researchers have described the characteristics of the community, school culture, and mindset for inquiry to be meaningful, successful, and worthwhile.  So is it agreed that it is time for transforming the learning experiences of students, moving away from “covering curriculum” and testing, and consciously creating communities of inquiry?

Source:  Crick, R.D. (2009). Inquiry-based learning:
Reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archaeological pedagogy.
Curriculum Journal 20(1): 73-92.

Readings and Viewings

As you read, consider the culture of your own school, your own personal learning strengths, and the nature of your community.  How can teachers transform the learning experiences?  What matters for learning?  What qualities of mind, aspects of community, and dimensions of the school community do you think best prepare students for learning in our changed world?

Conference Board of Canada. (2015). Employability Skills 2000+ and Innovation Skills Profile.  Education and Skills Products.  Ottawa, ON: Conference Board of Canada. [See/download pdf brochures]

Fontichiaro, K. (2009). Nudging toward inquiry – Re-envisioning existing research projects. School Library Monthly 26(1): 17-19.

Fontichiaro, K. (2011). Nudging toward inquiry – Let it rest: Reflecting on instructional practice. School Library Monthly 27(8): 8-10.

Gainer, J. (2012) Critical thinking: Foundational for digital literacies and democracy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 56(1): 14-17.

Hamilton, B.J. (2011). Creating conversations for learning: School libraries as sites of participatory culture. School Library Monthly 27(8): 41-43.

Jenkins, J., K. Clinton, R. Purushotma, J.J. Robison & M. Weigel. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. (New Media Literacies White paper). Chicago, IL: MacArthur Foundation.

Lankes, R.D. (2013). Plenary session: The Inspiration Summit, December 6-7. Wall Centre, Vancouver, BC. In M. Ekdahl. TL Special Weekly Blog (Jan 18, 2013).

Moreillon, J., M. Lluhtala & C.T. Russo. (2001). Learning that sticks: Engaged educators + engaged learners. School Library Monthly 28(1): 17-20.

O’Keefe, P.A. (2014 Sept. 12). Liking work really matters.  The New York Times 12.

Rheingold, H. (2005). The new power of collaboration. TEDTalks.

Robinson, K. (2013). How to escape education’s Death Valley. TEDTalks.  YouTube.

Robinson, K. (2016). How Schools Kill Creativity.  TEDTalks.  YouTube.

Zhao, Y. (2008).  What knowledge has the most worth?  The School Administrator.

Grant Wiggins, in the classic article “The futility of trying to teach everything of importance” (1989), calls the task of teaching Sisyphean; there is simply too much to know and thus to teach:

This was one thing that Socrates knew deeply and unequivocally: The ideal curriculum would use knowledge judiciously to further insight. Maybe, there, the myth of Sisyphus is appropriate for curriculum work. As Camus suggested at the end of his essay on Sisyphus, given a deep awareness of the “absurd” plight of his task, “One cam imagine Sisyphus as happy” (58).

Meaning-making from information and its transformation into knowledge are the natural and intended outcomes of providing information in the framework of inquiry. Inquiry, as Barbara Stripling suggests in the “Using Inquiry” (2004), is quite simply:

… a way of learning that requires active engagement. The learner identifies what he already knows, asks intriguing questions about what he does not know, investigates the answers, constructs new understanding, and shares those understandings with others. Inquiry involves reading, writing, speaking and listening to learn. The entire process is permeated with reflection and critical thinking. The result of inquiry is not only deep learning about the inquiry question, but also the development of skills for independent learning (15).

READINGS:

The following articles offer deep insight into how inquiry works in various instructional contexts, why it is used, and what exactly it is; often it is compared to traditional instruction. As you read, consider how and why it works, what it is, and what challenges you could anticipate to designing, implementing, and assessing an inquiry approach.

Altman, A. (2014). Skipping out. Time 183(15): 12.

Coatney, S. (2013). Zeroing in on inquiry. School Library Monthly 29(4): 5-8.

Coatney, S. (2015). Essential questions and answers for implementing inquiry. School Library Monthly 31(5): 11-13.

Donham, J. (2010). Deep learning through concept-based inquiry. School Library Monthly 27(1): 8-11.

Edwards, H.S. (2015). Leaving tests behind. Time 185(5): 28-31.

Ekdahl, M. (2013). Inquiry about inquiry.  TL Special Weekly Report.  Vancouver, BC.

Fontichiaro, K. (2013). Nudging toward inquiry – Move beyond traditional research. School Library Monthly 30(1): 49.

Maloney, D.H. (2010). Solving problems that count. Educational Leadership 68(1): 55-58.

Stripling, B.K. (2008). Using inquiry to explode myths about learning and libraries. CSLA Journal 28(1):15-17.

Stripling, B.K. (2008). Inquiry: Inquiring minds want to know. School Library Media Activities Monthly 25(1): 50-52.

Wiggins, G. (1989). The futility of trying to teach everything of importance. Educational Leadership 47(3): 54-59.

Additional Reading, excerpted from book:

Stripling, B.K. (2003). Inquiry-based learning. In B.K. Stripling & S. Hughes-Hassell (Eds.) Curriculum connections through the library (3-39). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

AN INQUIRY PLAN: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ASSIGNMENT 1

In class today, we will be looking at the nature of inquiry. Much can be learned from the recommended readings for Assignment 1, A Plan for Inquiry. Inquiry Plans do not include formal lesson plans as you might be accustomed to producing in Education courses. We will look at suggested approaches in a number of the articles below:

Journal Articles

Berger, P. (2010). Student inquiry and Web 2.0. School Library Monthly 28(1): 14-17.

Keeling, M. (2015). Backwards design considerations for the 21st century school library. School Library Monthly 31(4): 22-24.

Steps to designing inquiry-based units (2008). School Library Media Activities Monthly 25(3): 2.

Stripling, B.K. (2010). Teaching students to think in the digital environment: Digital literacy and digital inquiry. School Library Monthly 26(8): 16-19.

Stripling, B.K. and Harada, V.H. (2012). Designing learning experiences for deeper understanding. School Library Monthly 29(3): 5-12.

Excerpts from Books

Stripling, B.K. (2003) Inquiry-based learning. In Curriculum Connections through the Library. Eds. B.K. Stripling & S. Hughes-Hassell. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. Appendix. In Understanding by Design (Expanded 2nd edition). 327-332. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Online Resources

Chaloner, Mark.  Teaching Inquiry Learning.  YouTube.

Ekdahl, M., Farquharson, M., Robinson, J., and Turner, L. (2010). Points of Inquiry: A framework for information literacy and the 21st century learner. Vancouver, BC: BCTF/BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association.

LearnAlberts.ca. (2004). Focus on Inquiry

OSLA. (2010).  Together for Learning.  Toronto: Ontario Library Association.

New York City School Library System. (n.d.). The Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC): Benchmark Skills for Grades 8-12; Assessments; Common Core Alignment.NY, NY: New York City Department of Education.

Wright, M. (2014). The model of inquiry. YouTube.

COURSE OVERVIEW

LLED 469 emphasizes skills in resource selection to support classroom teachers and others in the community who use an inquiry approach to teaching and learning; inquiry for all learners represents a shift from traditional methods of instructional delivery, assessment, and curriculum design. When engaged in inquiry, students and classroom teachers work together, often with the teacher-librarian, going beyond the standard textbook to find the best resources to pursue an inquiry question or topic of interest. All educators expect, and are expected to be able, to find and select resources that are appropriate for their curriculum; teacher-librarians, as part of their training and practice, evaluate, select, acquire, and manage resources to support students and teachers, both in curriculum and in reading for interest. The practices of resource-based inquiry can also be utilized in community contexts, either with community libraries or community resources.

COURSE READINGS: TIPS FOR 

Plan to read about 30 pages each day for the following class.  Note that many of the articles are short.  You may find that you read some articles or excerpts or view some videos more deeply than others.  That’s okay.  You will draw on a broad base of readings and in-class presentations and discussions when you design your inquiry unit.

To find articles and readings, use keywords from the titles and author names to search the UBC Library online collections. You will need to use your CWL to log in.  Search here by using unique keywords: UBC Library “Find the Best [Resources] here.”

Example:  If the article title is “The futility of trying to teach everything of importance” by Grant Wiggins (1989), the best keywords might be simply Wiggins futility trying importance; in fact, keeping things simple, the two words Wiggins and futility are enough to find this very old article. Where possible, choose the pdf version as this will include any graphics; many information aggregators like EBSCO and GALE will pay for the text but will exclude the costs of purchasing images.

This above-noted article by Grant Wiggins is a great place to begin reading.  With the overwhelming proliferation of data and information, Wiggins’ views — almost 30 years old — have only become more relevant.

Highly recommended are readings by Barbara Stripling (Inquiry), Grant Wiggins & Jaye McTighe (Understanding by Design), and Kristin Fontichiaro (Series “Nudging Toward Inquiry”).