To Google or not to Google?

Our inquiry project (see previous post for details) is has been going on for several days. The students have been looking at images, political cartoons, and paintings of the Reconstruction Era.
Some are making connections and asking good questions about Reconstruction.

So, now we are at the point where students need to research their questions. Do we send them to the databases or to google?

I know that the databases offer articles that are more middle school oriented, with built in lexile levels, images and engaging videos. My favorite database is Student Resources in Context by Gale at the moment. But, students don't like using the databases! They want to Google everything.

In the past, the librarian would set up "Path finders" for students, and bookmark reliable sources, great videos or organizations that had good resources. The librarian did a lot of work vetting the sources for the students. The students went to the resources and found the answers to their essential questions without worrying about knowing about transliteracy or how to evaluate sources. Does this serve the students well in the long run? Isn't part of learning knowing how to find the answers?

This is where I struggle. I know that databases offer the best articles for kids, but what if they can't access the databases? Shouldn't they know how to evaluate the sources? How to use the advanced tools to search more effectively? Shouldn't the students learn how to look at images, videos and other media to gain information?

We are going to give them a tour of Student Resources in Context, and World Book Online today. We will encourage them to use these databases today, but tomorrow we will give them some tips and tricks on evaluating good websites and how to search effectively on Google. We will see which method yields more results.

Reconstruction, an Inquiry Project? Is that even possible?

Over the last week, I have been planning with an 8th grade teacher to do inquiry project. This is a HUGE moment for me and my role as Creative Innovative Specialist. Not because this is the first time I have planned for instruction with a teacher, but because this is the first time this teacher is going to try and let student interest guide  the project! The tough part has been how to structure the project for Greg. He picked a topic that is probably too limited for real inquiry learning, and is very fact heavy.  The topic is American History, specifically Reconstruction.  I am not even sure that a try inquiry topic can have such a narrow focus, but we are going to give it a shot!

So, how do you create a student directed project on a topic that they don't really think about or wonder about. That's where it got difficult! So, we decided to go with images the time period as the jumping off point, instead of articles or textbook writings.

The images are stunning, engaging and will hopefully trigger the students to wonder about the time enough to come up with a plan of action!

There is some debate on creating the essential question for the students or letting them come up with their own. Ewan McIntosh (@ewanmcintosh) would say that it is essential that the students come up with the questions to investigate, but Greg felt that a guiding essential question is the only way to ensure that the students learn about Reconstruction, which is part of his curriculum guide.

Day 1: Our essential question is "Does racial equality depend on government action?" The plan is to give the students some background knowledge before showing them the images by doing the "K" in a KWL chart with the students, then presenting them some facts or ideas in a video that Greg created. 

Day 2: Show the student the images, in an art gallery type setting, ask them to come up with some questions that the people in the images might be asking, and do some wondering about the actual locations, time period and intent of the images. Then, ask the students what they are wondering about after working with the images. They will share their wonderings with their group, then do a some research on one of the questions that they came up with in their groups.

Day 3-7: After a little bit of research, we are going to ask the students to come up with a question that they are going research further. (We will be there to guide them away from Google-able ones, of course!) The students research their questions and look for present day connections and then find a way to share their learning with their peers.

So, is this really an inquiry based project? Not in the purest sense for sure...but, I was so happy to work with Greg to change his normally very structured question asking, fact finding projects into something that might ignite more motivation, understanding and interest in the roots of racism in our students.

I will write more posts as the unit progresses. If you have any tips or ideas, please let me know! We need all the help we can get!

Voicethread

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse was the historical fiction novel that the 7th graders were reading. The LA teachers came to the LMC Director, Kay, and I to develop a unit for the students.  The goal was to enhance the students' understanding of the setting and the plight of the characters in the novel through studying the period in history.

We chose to use ed.Voicethread.com for the student's final artifact because the teachers are very familiar with it and thought it best to use something they know well. But, we could have chosen anything really! Students were divided into groups and charged with researching The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of 1929-1939. Each group was provided with an esssential question that guided their research and used EasyBib to collect their research and sources. Each group will view all of the voicethreads (jigsaw style) and answer student generated questions about all the other projects so they familiarize themselves will all the topics studied. 

Students went to The Library of Congress and used the primary sources of the photography and music archives to set the scene for their research. The music and voices of the time really motivated the students to learn more about the topic. 

Too often, students use Voicethread.com to retell the facts on a topic. They read verbatim information they copied from their sources. Voicethread is full of these types of projects. We were interested in creating something new from the research. Students were encouraged to find a point of view to share their learning on the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. To take ownership of their own learning, and create an engaging projects to teach the rest of their class about their topic. 

The final projects ranged from news broadcasts, radio shows, radio plays and hard hitting interviews with FDR.  The presentations were creative, engaging and the students really internalized the period in history for them. 

I had an Aha! moment. I saw that creating something new from the research was what changed the engagement of the students. They got into character, walked in the shoes of the migrant workers and the heard the pain of the time. The students owned the learning! Their Voicethreads are the best we have ever made. 

For the next time:
We would ask the students to come up with their own essential questions. 
We would use something that allows images to flow more smoothly in the background of the audio, while maintaining the global audience that Voicethread provides.
We would allow the students to use background sounds to enhance the mood.

Causes and Effects of the Dust Bowl

Innovations From the Dust Bowl