The Magical School Learning Commons: a UBC Librarianship Journey
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Friday, April 7, 2023
LIBE 467 Theme 3 Blog Post
LIBE 467: Reference Resources
3:56 / 8:25
Sreenivasan describes the difference between digital natives and digital immigrants. Some prefer digital natives and digital non-natives. He further coins the term "tradigital" which is a combination of traditional and digital skills. "You have a digital overlay....the word traditional is first." It means that you have a solid understanding of digital learning, but you also have a background in the traditional. This applies to many (not all) teacher librarians today.
The elementary students I work with are digital natives and they are developing their critical thinking skills with a superfluous amount of technology. I did not have the privilege of having this integrated into my learning schematics. "Cognitively speaking, children have trouble with hierarchically structured information sites that require a specific sequence of navigation behaviors and find unstructured information environments containing distracting information links difficult to understand" (Riedling, 2013, p.13). Planning information-seeking process activities have to take this into account. Students are not familiar with using physical reference resources like dictionaries and atlases as they are with Alexa and Google Maps. I am in reverse.
I met this week with the TL of our feeding middle school. I wanted to know how I can prepare our students for the middle school SLLC, how she was fostering the learning from K-5, and if she was open to working collaboratively the following year with our students be it mentoring the primary students with literacy skills and/or the intermediate students with coding, research skills, etc. We were both in agreement about discouraging the "just google it" attitude for staff and students, and promoting digital catalogues and physical references in the LC. We both use World Book Digital Encyclopedia from the district's website, parts of EBSCO, and OERs. Learning that these databases were grey materials, that using Google was just skimming the service of what the web really has to offer...it is very "entangling".
What then? Here are some points that will stick with me:
As the TL to support the information-seeking process, I need to be honing my own searching skills to be more effective as the information specialist. I can be better than Google.
The Deep Web is not the Dark Web. The Deep Web is also referred to as the Invisible Web.
Informing staff and students, maybe through a video, or infographic about vocabulary like deep web (like or log-in required databases at school), surface web (which is astounding that that is only what Google really covers) invisible web, grey materials, OERs, databases to ensure we are all speaking the same language thus creating more communication about researching skills in a more precise manner.
Developing an evaluation criterion for websites with students is extremely important to add to the researching process activities.
The need for current and valid, meaningful (based on user needs) in the LC is real.
Searching is simple. Clicking on websites and reading the mostly important material is straightforward. If your decoding isn't at a Grade 4/5 level, there are accesibility features. However, and that's a BIG however, you won't always be getting the accurate answer to your question. As well, these answers may not be the best source of information. Typical search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing actually access only a tiny fraction — estimated at 0.03% — of the internet (The Ultimate Guide to the invisible web 2018).
"The deep web can be used to find information that you couldn't otherwise access through a simple Google search, and that can prove immeasurably useful to your students and colleagues" (The Ultimate Guide to the invisible web 2018). As the TL, introducing the Deep Web and its values like the following to staff and students can support more expert researching skills for the school community:
In a practical sense, researching and brainstorming relevant resources online for curricular content and high-interest for staff and students in a universal space like the SLLC website, becomes more and more apparent as I explored the various readings in theme 3. Keeping a "tradigital" mindset, it is so important to also have physical reference resources within reach as it builds information-seeking strategies that begin the process of the problem-solving model when researching.
Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants: Sree Sreenivasan: TEDxNewYork. YouTube. (2015, January 15). Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://youtu.be/n_9gI0B4nS4
Internet Archive. Internet Archive: About IA. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://archive.org/about/
Jstor. (n.d.). Jstor Home. Explore the world’s knowledge, cultures, and ideas. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.jstor.org/
"I can be better than google" really resonated with me. I think one of the major takeaways from me is that I need to hone and improve my skills and be confident in using all the resources I want my students to be able to learn and use. I love the idea of using a website criterion in order for students to learn and know what makes a suitable resource and how we can ensure we are getting the best information is a great idea. Also your idea of an infrograph for thinks like dark vs deep is so smart because ya.. I also confused the two at first. And this could be a quick 5 minute delivery at a staff meeting.
"I can be better than google" really resonated with me. I think one of the major takeaways from me is that I need to hone and improve my skills and be confident in using all the resources I want my students to be able to learn and use. I love the idea of using a website criterion in order for students to learn and know what makes a suitable resource and how we can ensure we are getting the best information is a great idea. Also your idea of an infrograph for thinks like dark vs deep is so smart because ya.. I also confused the two at first. And this could be a quick 5 minute delivery at a staff meeting.
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