Competency 9: Internet

My topic area is teaching research skills in an elementary school library. The website I discovered is Research Rocket presented by the Kentucky Virtual Library. It is an AWESOME website! It is very kid friendly. The graphics and vibrant colors are very appealing and child appropiate. It is a web based tutorial that takes kids step by step and throughout the research process. It has links to each of the six steps and each step explains it in easy to understand language. There are further links to define terms within each step.

I came across this website through another website, TeacherLibraianNing, it is a community for teachers-librarians and other educators. I was searching for an image to use that would correlate with my topic area of interest. I had used the term "library research" on Google Image and a blogger had used this image from the tutorial.


The post is titled "Research Made Easy" by Keith Schoch, posted on Feb 21, 2010. His blog can be found on TeacherLibrarianNing.com.

Competency 8: Research/Multimedia

Introduction Informtion Problem Solving: The Big6(TM) by Mike Eisenberg.

The “Big6™” is copyright © (1987) Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert E. Berkowitz. For more on Big6, visit: http://www.big6.com/

link: http://www.big6.com/what-is-the-big6/

I went directly to the Big6 home website and this power point presentation was available to view via Slideshare on this link Big6 Higher Ed Audience Overview.

I am familiar with the Big6 research model because of a teacher workshop I attended a few years ago. I have also retrieved several books from this company while conducting my database searches. I would like to learn more about the Big6 information and technology literacy model and curriculum and use it when I become librarian.

Competency 7: Image

This image is the cover for the book "R" is for Research by Toni Buzzeo. Jacket art is by Sachiko Yoshikawa. I came across this image while searching Google Images using the term "library research". The link from Google was for the publishing company of the book, Upstart Books.

http://www.highsmith.com/upstartbooks/quotRquot-is-for-Research-Library-Book-c_21711372/

The following link is to the author's home page, http://www.tonibuzzeo.com/booksrisforresearch.html .

The book is an alphabet rhyming book introducing basic research and library skills. This would be an excellent book to use with the primary grades as a read aloud and introduction to those skills.

Competency 6: Search 4 Pearl Growing Strategy in Book in Print

Pearl Growing Strategy

database: Books in Print

query: I am a first year elementary school librarian and I would like to learn how to teach elementary school students how to research information. What resources can I use that would help me teach research skills in an elementary school library?

Pearl:
Harker, Christa et al. (2008) Library Research with Emergent Readers: Meeting Standards through Collaboration. United States: Linworth Publishing, Incorporated.

The following subject terms describe the query.

Bowker Subjects:
LIBRARY ORIENTATION
RESEARCH
SCHOOL LIBRARIES
LIBRARIANS
EDUCATION_UNITED STATES
ACTIVITY PROGRAMS IN EDUCATION
LITERACY

General Subjects (BISAC):
EDUCATION / Teaching Methods & Materials / Library Skills
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Literacy
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Library & Information Science / School Media
EDUCATION / General
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Library & Information Science / General
REFERENCE / Research

I am going to use RESEARCH, and SCHOOL LIBRARIES from the Boweker subjects.

search statement 1
su=(research) AND (school libraries)
results: 10 records

Citations:
Carlson, Chris (2009). Guiding Students into Information Literacy: Strategies for Teachers and Teacher-Librarians. United States: Scarecrow Press Incorporated

Howard, J. and Eckhardt S. (2005) Action Research: A Guide for Library Media Specialists. United States: Linworth Publishing Incorporated.

Reflections:
WOW!. I like this strategy. All 10 records fit the query. I realize that this will not happen this easily on all queries and on other databases, but it sure made it a whole lot easier to find subject terms from a known item. This is a great strategy to use when there is a known item to use as the "pearl" and grow the search from there.

Competecy 6: Search 3 Succesive Facets in WorldCat

Successive Facets Strategy

database: WorldCat

query: "I am a first year elementary school librarian and I would like to learn how to teach elementary school students how to research information. What resources can I use that would help me teach research skills in an elementary school library?

facets from query:
facet 1: teach
facet 2: research skills
facet 3: elementary school library

synonyms for facets
facet 1: instruction, lessons, teaching
facet 2: research skills, information literacy, library skills
facet 3: school library media center, school libraries

Subject terms
facet 1: elementary school teaching, instruction
facet 2: library research, information retrieval
facet 3: school libraries, elementary school libraries, libraries and schools

subject terms search results
facet 1: instruction-303,534
elementary school teaching - 6,937
facet 2: library research -449
information retrieval - 13,046
facet 3: school libraries - 13,777
elementary school libraries - 1,040
libraries and schools - 874

I will combine the largets retrieval set of each facet.

su=(instruction) AND (school libraries)
results: 122 records
There were no relevant records to the query.

su=(instruction) AND (information retrieval)
results 646 records

su=(instruction) AND (information retrieval) AND (elementary school libraries)
results 1 record

Miller, P. (2003). Research skills. Fort Atkinson, Wis: UpstartBooks.

I am not satified with this search. There has to be more records in this database that pertain to the query. I am going to try another search.

su=(instruction) AND (information retrieval OR library research) AND (elementary school libraries)
results: 1 records

The same record I just cited. I am starting to get frustrated with this search. I realize that the successive facet strategy is to start with the broadest term and succesively add subject terms to narrow the results but it is not retrieving satifactory results. It is probably that the database is not suitable for this search query. I thought WorldCat would be a suitable database because it is a global catalog of library collections. I am going to try the building block strategy.

su=(instruction OR elementary school teaching) AND (library research OR information retrieval) AND (school libraries OR elementary school libraries OR (schools and libraries))
results: 31 records

Harker, C., & Putonti, D. (2008). Library research with emergent readers: Meeting standards through collaboration. Columbus, Ohio: Linworth Books

There was only a handful of records that pertained to the query. At least I was able to get one record using the successive facets strategy but I do not consider this a successful search.

Comepetency 6: Search 2 Specific Facet First in Libray Literature and Information Science

Specific Facet First Strategy

database: Library Literature and Information Science database

Query: I am a first year elementary school librarian and I would like to learn how to teach elementary school students how to research information. What resources can I use that would help me teach research skills in an elementary school library?

Facets from query
facet 1: teach
facet 2: research skills
facet 3: elementary school library

Synonyms for facets
facet 1: teaching, instruction, lessons
facet 2: information literacy, library skills
facet 3: school library media center

subject terms
facet 1: bibliographic instruction/elementary and high school students, school libraries/activity projects,
facet 2: research techniques/teaching
facet 3: school libraries/elementary schools

subject search records results
bibliographic instruction/elementary and high school students -
1294 records
school libraries/activity projects - 2358 records
research techniques/teaching - 239 records
school libraries/elementary schools - 35 records

research techniques/teaching and school libraries/elementary schools have the smallest retrieval sets, so I combined them first.

search statement 1
su=(research techniques/teaching) AND (school libraries/elementary school)
results: zero records

search statement 2
su=(research techniques/teaching) AND (bibliographic instruction/elementary and high school students)
results: 49 records

WOW! This is a good retrieval set. There were many records that fit the query.

Citations:
Eisenberg, M. (2003). Implementing Information Skills: Lessons Learned From the Big6 Approach to Information Problem-Solving. School Libraries in Canada, 22(4), 20-3.

Hughes, S. (2003). The Big6 as a Strategy for Student Research. School Libraries in Canada, 22(4), 28-9.

Duncan D. and Lockhart L. (2000) I-Search, you search, we all learn to research: a how-to-do-it manual for teaching elementary school students to solve information problems. New York, NY: Neal Shuman Publishers, Inc.

Reflection:
I liked using this strategy. It let me know how many records for each facet alone and I can combine the most specific facets first to see what kind of retrieval sets it come up with. Once I had the best subject terms possible for all the initial facets and synonyms, the retrieval set was so much better.

I tried the following search statement and the retrieval set consisted of only 6 records of which only 1 was relevant to the query.

search statement 3
su=(research techniques/teaching) AND (school libraries/activity projects)

I also tried a building block strategy using all the subject terms just to see what kind of retrieval set I would get.

search statement 4
su=(bibliographic instruction/elementary and high school students OR school library/activity projects) AND (research techniques/teaching) AND (school libraries/elementary schools)
results: zero results

I can see how this strategy is useful if an initial Boolean statement using the building block strategy has zero results.

Competency 6: Search 1 Building Block Strategy in ERIC

Building Block Strategy
Database: ERIC /FirstSearch

Query: I am a first year elementary school librarian and I would like to learn how to teach elementary school students how to research information. What resources can I use that would help me teach research skills in an elementary school library?

facets from query
Facet 1: Teach
Facet 2: research skills
Facet 3: elementary school library

Synonyms for facets
Facet 1: teaching, instruction, lessons
Facet 2: research skills, library skills, information literacy
facet 3: school library media center

Subject terms
facet 1: teaching methods, teaching models, intructional materials,
facet 2: research skills, information skills, student research
facet 3: elementary school library-no subject terms available
school library media center-no subject terms available

I decided to separate elementary school library and search for subject terms for library and elementary school separately.

facet 4: library-library instruction, information literacy, library skills
facet 5: elementary school, elementary education

Boolean Search Statement
search statement 1
su=(teaching methods OR teaching models OR instructional materials) AND (research skills OR information skills OR student research) AND (library instruction OR information literacy OR library skills) AND (elementary school OR elementary education)

results: 52 records

Citations:
Milam, P. (2002). InfoQuest: A New Twist on Information Literacy. Worthington, OH: Linworth Publishing.

Eisenberg M. and Berkowitz R. (1999) Teaching Information and Technology Skills: The Big 6(TM) in Elementary Schools. Professional Growth Series. Worthington, OH: Linworth Publishing.

Reflection:
ERIC/FirstSearch was an excellent database to use for this query. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center. Since the query has to do with teaching elementary school students I felt this database would be definitely have information that would answer the query. This database had many records that provide information and resources about teaching elementary school students research skill in a school library.

The building block strategy is getting easier to use each time I use it. I just need to make sure to include all possible synonyms for each facet. There were a lot of subject terms to use after I added synonyms and searched for subject headings for those synonyms. After I identified synonyms and subject terms for "teach" it made a HUGE difference in the retrieval set. There were so many more pertinent records to the query.

Competency 5: Library Thing

Library Thing Tag Cloud

372.3 (1) apt (1) bibliotheken (1) Big 6 (1) Big6 (1) D32 (1) ed (1) Electronic information resource literacy-Study and teaching (1) electronic information resource literacy-study and teaching (elementary) (1) elementary (1) info literacy (1) information literacy (3) information retrieval-study and teaching (secondary) (1) information storage and retrieval (1) information tech (1) informational retrevial-study and teaching (elementary) (1) lib (1) librarians (1) library (1) library science (1) LIS (1) ls5313 (1) NF (1) professional (1) professional development (1) research (1) research skills (3) school libaries (1) school library (1) technology (1)


http://www.librarything.com/work/book/56764496

Teaching Information & Technology Skills : The Big6 in Elementary Schools
by Michael B. Eisenberg

My area of interest is teaching children how to research information. I used the tag research skills under the search tab and the first book was Teaching Information and Technology Skills : The Big6 in Elementary Schools by Micheal Eisenberg. My school had a workshop a few years ago on the Big6 approach to teaching students how to research information. I am familiar with the 6 steps in the model and I have used it in my classroom with my students. The book describes how to implement each of the six steps for teaching elementary student how to research information. The six steps are: Task Definition, Information Seeking Strategies, Location and Access, Use of Information, Synthesis, and Evaluation.

Database search: Library Literature and Books in Print

My second grade students are learning about the woodland forest ecosystem in science this month. I am integrating writing skills with science. I want to teach my students how to research different kinds of animals and the layers of the forest and complete a technology project that will use the information they have researched. I am focusing the search on teaching students research skills in the library.

"naive' question"

What lessons do I need to prepare to teach my students how to use the library to research information about woodland forests and animals?"

Library Literature Database

First I constructed the table and used the same facets and alternate terms from the previous database search. I used the thesaurus and added a few more terms.

Boolean statement: (elementary school students or children or children's library services or school libraries) AND (research skills or library skills or research techniques) AND (lessons or activity projects or teaching methods)

SS1: (elementary school students or children or children's library services or school libraries) AND (research skills or library skills or research techniques) AND (lessons or activity projects or teaching methods)

results: 9 records

citations: Only one record out of the nine was relevent to the query.

Stimson, Margaret (2003). "Winnipeg Teacher Librarians' Strategies For Teaching Research Skills". School libraries in Canada (0227-3780), 22 (4), p. 35.

Books in Print Database
I used the same facets and alternate terms from the previous search. I was unable to locate a thesaurus tab to try and search for thesaurus terms. I went to the advanced search tab and proceeded to search using the terms I used from previous searches on other databases.

Boolean Statement:

(elementary school students or elementary education or children or children's library services or school libraries) AND (research skills or library skills) AND (lessons or activities or teaching methods)

advanced search

Status: In print and forthcoming

Format: books

SS1: (elementary school students or elementary education or children or children's library services or school libraries) AND (research skills or library skills) AND (lessons or activities or teaching methods)

results: 26 records

citations:

Carlson, Chris. (2009). Guiding Student into Information Literacy: Strategies for Teachers and Teacher-Librarians. United States: Scarecrow Press Incorporated.

Books in Print database also included a feature using a Boolean Statement so I tried it, I used the subject all index and then the Boolean statement I wrote above.

su=(elementary school students or elementary education or children or children's libraries or school libraries) AND (research skills or library skills) AND (lessons or activities or teaching methods)

results: 37 records

citation:

Harker, Christa et al. (2008) Library Research with Emergent Readers: Meeting Standards through Collaboration. United States: Linworth Publishing, Incorporated.

Conclusions:

The search conducted using the Library Literature Database was more difficult for me to locate thesaurus terms. There was hardly any articles relevant to my query. The search results using the Books in Print database had so many more resources available that fit my query and not just the subject headings.

Database Search: WorldCat and ERIC

My second grade students are learning about the woodland forest ecosystem in science this month. I am integrating writing skills with science. I want to teach my students how to research different kinds of animals and the layers of the forest and complete a technology project that will use the information they have researched. I am focusing the search on teaching students research skills in the library.

'naive' question
" What lessons do I need to prepare to teach my students how to use the library to research information about woodland forests and animals?"




















Boolean search statements:
(Elementary school students or elementary education or children) AND (research skills or library skills or information literacy or student research or information skills) AND (lessons or activities or library instruction or curriculum)

ERIC/Search database

SSI: (elementary education or children) AND (research skills or library skills or student research) AND (lessons or activities or library instruction)

results: 1,118 records

Citation
Messmer, N. (2006). Developing Powerful Student Researchers. Learning and Leading with Technology. 33(4), 23-25.

SS2: (elementary students or children) AND (research skills or library skills) AND (lessons or library instruction)

results: 40 records

Citations: I am posting 4 citatations of articles that I think pertain to my area of interest.

Moody, R. (1997). On the Process of Inquiry: A Synergy of Teacher, School Library Media specialist, and Student. School Library Media Activities Monthly. 14(1), 31-34,50.

Gauthier, L. R. (1990). Teaching Upper Elementary Students about Reference Skills. Arizona Reading Journal. 19(1), 27.

Wesley, T. (1991). Teaching Library Research: Are We Preparing Students for Effective Information Use? Emergency LibrarianHammond, J. K. (1987).

"Primary" Research: A Program of Basic Research Skills for Primary Students. School Library Media Activities Monthly. 3(10), 26-29.. 18(3), 23-24,26-30.

WorldCat database

SSI: (elementary education or children) AND (research skills or library skills or student research) AND (lessons or activities or library instruction)

results: 9

Citation:
Los Alamos Public Schools. (1998). Library curriculum Grades K-6. [S.l.]: Los Alamos Public Schools.

SS2: (elementary students or children) AND (library skill or research skills) AND (lessons or library intruction)

Results: 2

Conclusion: The ERIC databases yielded more results for my query than the WorldCat databases. The second search statement had a fewer number of results compared to my first search statement and I was able to locate quite a few relevent articles to the query about teaching elementary students research skills. The first search yielded way to many results to sift through. It was easier and quicker to look over the results from the second search statement. WorldCat brought up the same few articles. WorldCat is a much larger database so I thought I would have had a greater number of results from WorldCat but ERIC is database focused on education realted journals and articles. The use of the subject headings played an important part in the difference in the number of results obtained because each database has their own list of subject headings. Knowledge of which database would best fit the query should also be taken into consideration when helping a patron conduct a search.

Competency 4: RSS Feed

Esme Raji Codell is a self proclaimed readiologist. She coined and trademarked the word to describe what she does. She is an a teacher, librarian and author and has made it her mission to promote reading and children's literature. She has a website http://www.planetesme.com/ and a blog where she writes reviews of books. I love children's literature and helping kids make connections to books and teaching them all the wonderful things they can learn from books. I have chosen to include the blog http://planetesme.blogspot.com/ for my RSS feed because as an elementary school teacher and future librarian I think the reviews Ms. Codell writes will help keep me updated with the most current and best books written for children.

Competency 3: Podcasts

Reading aloud to children is a very important part of early literacy education. In addition to being entertained children learn a lot of important reading skills and behaviors modeled by adults. Elementary school teachers and children's librarians know the importance of story time and read aloud so I thought it would be best for me to search for podcasts of people reading children's literature.

I used the search engine PodcastAlley.com using the term children's story time to search for podcasts. I liked Storynory: Audio Stories for Kids. I listened to a few podcasts and then went to the website http://storynory.com/ and discovered a wonderful website. There was a wide variety of story podcasts available to download and the best part is that they are free. There is a wide range of stories to choose from: fairy tales from Hans Christen Anderson and the Brother Grimm, Aesop, Bible stories, Greek Myths, stories from classic authors such as Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens and poems by Edgar Allen Poe, and William Blake, even the entire book "Alice in Wonderland". The storyteller, Natasha Gostwick, has a sweet voice with a British accent. She reads at a nice even pace and clearly enunciates each word.

One of my favorite books as a child was "Alice in Wonderland". There is a new movie version of "Alice in Wonderland'" set to open in March. I like to read aloud books that have had a movie based on them to my students to compare and contrast the movie and book. So I have decided to include a link to the first chapter here: http://storynory.com/2006/09/24/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-by-lewis-carroll/

podcast
http://media.libsyn.com/media/blogrelations/alice1.mp3

Indexing

Discussion question for Module 2: "Pick one concept that you find difficult to understand from the Chu reading this week, and write an entry on the discussion board about it, as if you were explaining it to someone completely unfamiliar with it."

My previous knowledge of the word index was the place in the back of a non-fiction book that has keywords in alphabetical order and page numbers that help the reader locate information in the book easier and more quickly without having to read the whole book over or flip pages throughout the book looking for information. That is what I teach my 2nd graders what an index is and how to use it. I had known index as a noun, a place in the book.

Now I am the student learning what indexing means in the world of library science and information representation. Here, index is used as a verb, indexing. It was difficult for me to distinguish between the different types of indexing. Derivative indexing, assignment indexing, free indexing, automated indexing, automatic indexing, the intellectual part of indexing, the mechanical part of indexing, machine indexing, manuel indexing, computerized indexing, citation indexing, string indexing, monkey indexing, indexing, indexing, indexing. It was just a blur of indexing. OK, so there is no such thing as monkey indexing it but it seemed like there was with all the different types of indexing. It was difficult to remember what each type of indexing was, much less how they compare and contrast. How can I explain what all these indexing terms mean to someone unfamiliar with it?

Well, I had to get all these indexing terms straight in my head first, so I created a flow chart so that I can see how the terms interconnect. Here is a jpeg of a Microsoft Office Power Point slide of a flow chart I created to help me learn the terms. Indexing

Chu, H. (2003). Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc p. 25-27, 32-33

Competency 2: Related Blog

My career goal is to become an elementary school librarian. I focused my search for blogs written by elementary school librarians. I tried all four of the search engines provided for us in our module. I tried the Google and Yahoo search engine links first because I familiar with them. I did not find any blogs that were of interest to me using them. I then tried Technorati and found a blog I liked on the first try. I used elementary libraries as my search criteria. The blog Voices from the Inglenook interested me because it is one I can relate to easily as an elementary school teacher and what I aspire to be as a teacher librarian. The blog does offer an RSS feed and it also has a Visitor's Map and FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed.

The blog author Janet Reid is the school librarian for Cold Spring School in Santa Barbara, California. She writes about the lessons each grade level is working on each week in the library. She even has students write book reviews and posts video blogs of students reading their own book reviews. She has many links posted and I found a few other blogs I found interesting. Ms. Reid is very adept at writing and posting blogs. She also has a blog for library skills and research skills. The blog Cold Spring School Library Skills Blog has assignments posted that include library skills for students to complete and respond by writing comments. The blog The Research Blog is for research projects posted by the students of Cold Spring School

Here is an excerpt from the blog Voices from the Inglenook

News From the Library--January 25, 2010
Third Grade--In order to learn about the literary concept of plot, third graders heard Tomi de Paola's enchanting book Adelita. Before reading the story I asked the students to summarize the plot of a Cinderella story which they did easily. Then as we read Adelita we compared and contrasted the difference in this Mexican version.


These three blogs are excellent examples of a superb teacher librarian.

Introduction

Hello Readers, I am a second grade teacher who is studying to be an elementary school librarian. I have created this blog for my graduate level class, Information Storage and Retrival. This blog will be used to communicate with classmates, professors, current and future librarians of all types, and anyone else who happens reads this blog. I will also use this blog to demonstrate competencies for my class.

I have been an elementary school teacher for 14 years. I have taught first, second, and third grade. I have taught 2nd grade for 9 years. I love teaching second grade, it has been my favorite grade to teach. I love children's literature and I want to be an advocate for it as both entertainment and as a learning resource for information. My topic area of interest is teaching elementary students research skills.

A few years ago I attended a staff developent that focused on teaching elementary school students how to research and organize information. I successfully implemented those strategies and skills into my teaching and I was amazed at the academic growth of my students. I enjoyed teaching my students how to locate information from various sources, such as encyclopedias, books, magazines, the internet and online databases. I then taught my students to use the information they had learned and how to organize and present it to their peers.

I appreciated the guidance and collaboration from my school librarian. I learned a lot from her and I decided I would like to continue my career as an educator in the role of librarian. One of my goals as a teacher is to teach students how to learn and inspire them to become self-motivated to learn and seek information independently. As a school librarian I will be able to work with students from different grade levels and be an instructional partner with classroom teachers.