Adriana Lugo

ET

Stripling, B. (2008) Inquiry-based teaching and learning—The role of the Library Media Specialist. School Library Media Activities Monthly XXV (1). Retrieved from 6/14/2017 /http://www.teachingbooks.net/content/InquiringMindsWantToKnow-Stripling.pdf

Explains inquiry based learning as well as how librarians can collaborate with teachers as well as use it to define their collection and teaching.

Adriana Lugo

CO

Stripling, B. (2008) Inquiry-based teaching and learning—The role of the Library Media Specialist. School Library Media Activities Monthly XXV (1). Retrieved from 6/14/2017 /http://www.teachingbooks.net/content/InquiringMindsWantToKnow-Stripling.pdf

Explains inquiry based learning as well as how librarians can collaborate with teachers as well as use it to define their collection and teaching. It is a very informative article.

Microsoft Education

Michele Peabody

Z

Microsoft Education
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/default.aspx
This is a free sign up for educators with free classes in all 21st century technology learning. The Skype in the classroom, Skype Mystery State (3-6grade),  real time virtual museums (provides real time docent), and Ask an Expert (via Skype) is a must for any teacher

Nicole Ogden
CO and ET

Maniotes, L. K., & Kuhlthau, C. C. (2014). Making the Shift: From Traditional Research Assignments to Guiding Inquiry Learning. Knowledge Quest, 43(2-), 8-17.

Summary

Maniotes and Kuhlthau compare the traditional research assignment framework that librarians often work in and propose a more authentic method that mirrors the inquiry process. They articulate how one visit to the library cannot cover all that students need to learn in order to accomplish authentic inquiry. The authors provide six steps to transform the research process and also discuss how the teacher librarian can convince the reluctant content teacher.

Evaluation

The authors perfectly capture the situation that many librarians find themselves in where they are given a small slice of time and expected to teach a whole range of valuable skills to a class in a one time visit. They provide suggestions on how to encourage teachers to partner with the TL on an inquiry process. They also provide some clear activities and steps in the research process that the TL could immediately adapt for the classroom.

Seeking and Finding Authentic Inquiry Models

Jacobsen. T.E., & O’Keefe, E. (2014). Seeking and finding authentic inquiry models for our evolving information landscape. Knowledge Quest (43)2, 26-33.

Summary: Jacobsen and O’Keefe suggest two shifts in education of information literacy: metaliteracy and threshold concepts. Metaliteracy is the concept that the Web 2.0 environment is better navigated by learners who are willing and able to reflect upon the interactions they have with and within this environment. Metaliterate individuals adapt to changing technologies and create relationships among related literacies. Threshold concepts are those foundational concepts necessary for understanding a particular discipline. The authors discuss ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015) as threshold concepts for Information Literacy.

Evaluation: The authors stress using the Framework as a guide to teach information literacy skills. They suggest, along with a focus on metaliteracy that the Framework will push students be engaged and promote authentic inquiry instruction. 

New Media Literacy Education (NMLE): A Developmental Approach

Amy Unger

Media Literacy Ed.

Graber, D. (2012) New Media Literacy Education (NMLE): A developmental approach. The National Association for Media Literacy Education's Journal of Media Literacy Education, 4(1), 82-92.

Summary:

In response to computer-technology usage by digital natives, the author of this article, Diana Graber, has developed and implemented a media-literacy curriculum called Cyberwise.  Her basis for its development was in response to a growing awareness of the immensity of internet and social media usage by digital natives, and scholars such as Prensky (2010), pointing towards a justified need for meeting young people "in whatever way they [educators, mentors] meet them" (this, increasingly meaning through technology) with opportunities that "best configure students' brains so that they can constantly learn, create, program, adopt, adapt, and relate positively to whatever and whomever they meet ...", along with James, et al., (2008) stating that, "... the responsibility lies with the adults (educators, policymakers, parents, etc.) to provide young people with optimal supports for good play and citizenship."

Furthermore, Graber's Cyberwise curriculum responds to the long-revered developmental theories of Piaget and Kohlberg, summed up as sharing the belief that

" ... children spend the first 12 years of life developing the cognitive structures that enable them to grasp the abstract, metaphoric, and symbolic types of information that lead to ethical thinking.  This understanding of cognitive and moral development requires us to at least consider how and when the youngest members of our society should be turned loose in a digital environment" (Graber, 2012).

Moreover, it is this capacity for ethical thinking that drives the Cyberwise curriculum.  Graber calls for our teaching of students to be wise users of the tools at their disposal, as a prerequisite to teaching media literacy.  Citing Ohler (2010), she notes the suggestion of a "whole school approach to behavior that sets the entirety of being digitally active within an overall ethical and behavioral context --- character education for the Digital Age."  Monke (2004) refers to this challenge with this:

"It seems that we are faced with a remarkable irony: that in an age of increasing artificiality, children first need to sink their hands deeply into what is real; that in an age of light-speed communication, it is crucial that children take the time to develop their own inner voice; that in an age of incredibly powerful machines we must first teach our children how to use the incredible powers that lie deep within themselves."

In searching for evidence of schooling that is currently meeting any portions of this demand, Graber found one approach to be notably successful at developing moral reasoning, i.e., the Waldorf® school approach.  In a cited dissertation (Hether, 2001), about high school seniors from diverse educational settings, the Waldorf® school approach was found--through a quantitative survey tool about moral reasoning, known as the DIT (Defining Issues Test)--to result in graduates scoring significantly higher in moral reasoning than students from religiously affiliated or public high schools.  Waldorf educated students scored in a range more commonly associated with college graduates (Graber, 2012, p. 87).

Perhaps even more importantly, the second phase of that same dissertation identified five aspects of Waldorf® education that might contribute to higher moral reasoning:

1. an emphasis on educating the whole person
2. sensitivity to developmental appropriateness
3. the practice of storytelling
4. the integral place of the arts in the curriculum
5. preservation of a sense of wonder towards the natural world

Sometime later, Jenkins, et al. (2006), (as in the Jenkins, et al.: Henry Jenkins of USC, and his team) identified "the media literacies", which have significant overlap with the aspects of Waldorf® education:

1.  networking, negotiation, collective intelligence and distributed cognition, such as occurs while students are working together to build a small structure (one of the many hands-on, collaborative projects in the Waldorf® curriculum)
2. visualization, judgement, and appropriation, such as the proficiencies cultivated through the Waldorf® empahasis on art
3. performance and simulation skills, such as developed by the dramatic storytelling practiced in Waldorf®, and 
4. play, considered a hallmark of Waldorf® education (Graber, 2012, p. 88).

While the article goes further to explain the middle school years as the right time for ethical media literacy instruction, through Harvard University's GoodPlay Project that identifies what ethical issues young people encounter in the digital world, it also makes mention of a three-year case study, through classroom action study, using Cyberwise (this being a Waldorf-inspired charter school in Orange County, CA) (Graber, 2012).

In conclusion, this article helps us stop and think about what we are doing while immersed in the beginnings of the digital age, with its "world full of both possibility and peril - rules of engagement being hashed out as we go" (Graber, 2012, p. 89).

Evaluation

I find this article to be indispensable, unique, and on the list of "why is this not required reading"?  Thank you for (hopefully) bearing with its length.

Citations referred to in the Graber Article (found to be in citation other than APA):

Hether, C.A. 2001. "The Moral Reasoning of High School Seniors from  Diverse Educational  Settings." Ph.D. dissertation, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text (Publication No. AAT 3044032).

James, C., K. Davis, A. Flores, J.M. Francis, L. Pettinghill, M. Rundel, and H. Gardner. 2008. "Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project." GoodWork® Project Report Series, Number 54. Project Zero, Harvard School of Education.

Jenkins, H., R. Purushotma, K. Clinton, M. Weigel and A.J. Robinson, 2006. Confronting the  Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. http://newmedialiteracies.org/.

Monke, L. 2004. "The Human Touch." Education Next 4(4). http://educationnext.org/thehumantouch/

Ohler, J.B. 2009. "Orchestrating the Media Collage." Educational Leadership 66(6): 8-13.  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/Orchestrating-the-Media- Collage.aspx

The Effectiveness of Inquiry Based Science Education in Relation to the Learners' Motivation Types

Elyssa Gooding

ET

Škoda, J., Doulík, P., Bílek, M., & Šimonová, I. (2015). THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INQUIRY BASED SCIENCE EDUCATION IN RELATION TO THE LEARNERS' MOTIVATION TYPES. Journal Of Baltic Science Education, 14(6), 791-803.

Summary:

This article studies inquiry based learning in science education. The authors found that students fell into 4 different learning types: explorers, directors, coordinators, and accurators. The researchers tested the students before the lesson, after the lesson, and then four months later. The results of the research found that inquiry based learning does not work for all students. The recommendation of the authors is that teachers adjust their teaching to accommodate all four types of learners, which means that inquiry based learning is not the only method they recommend employing.

Review:

I found that the conclusions from this study are a little bit of an indictment of teachers who rely to heavily on any one form of teaching. Clearly, inquiry based learning is a helpful part of teaching, but it should not be the only method. If lessons are too heavily structured to inquiry based learning, a portion of the student body will not be successful.

Development of an Inquiry-Based Learning Support System Based on an Intelligent Knowledge Exploration Approach

Elyssa Gooding

ET

Ji-Wei, W., Tseng, J. R., & Gwo-Jen, H. (2015). Development of an Inquiry-Based Learning Support System Based on an Intelligent Knowledge Exploration Approach. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 18(3), 282-300.

Overview:
This article outlines two ways to facilitate Inquiry-Based Learning: the Q&A Model and the Segmented Supplemental Material Model. These models set up a scaffolding for students to improve their IBL through structured knowledge and targeting problems. The models are supported through three learning modules: a web module, Q&A module, and SSM module. The researchers conducted a field experiment testing the efficacy of these models and found that students learned more with the advanced models of Inquiry Based Learning.

Review:
The research and methods outlined in this article were well founded and scientifically supported. I found some of the literature review a little confusing and had to reread to understand because the "models" had the same names as two of the three "modules". I suppose these naming issues could not be avoided, as the researchers were limited by the literature published.

School Libraries, Librarians, and Inquiry Based Learning

Gooding, Elyssa

LEVITOV, D. (2016). School Libraries, Librarians, and Inquiry Learning. Teacher Librarian, 43(3), 28-35.

Summary:

This article gives an overview of learning theories and compares old thinking to new thinking. The learning shift from constructivist instruction to inquiry based learning.gives librarians the opportunity to influence and participate in instruction. Librarians have a unique position in schools where they can show how inquiry based learning supports national standards.

Review:

Explaining the influence that teacher librarians can have on inquiry based curriculum and how it is supported by standards is good evidence to support the role of professional teacher librarians.