You’ve got to read this!

My sweet digital natives, their information spaces, and trying to Yoda – NeverEndingSearch Blog on School Library Journal

What an intriguing post by Joyce Valenza, teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School! She’s describing teaching high school seniors to use some Web 2.0 tools for their research projects and their reactions.

It reminds me of a conversation that I had with a librarian recently. Her question was “Is it really important that we (librarians) know how to use Web 2.0 tools? Aren’t they just something that kids play around with?” My answer was a resounding Yes! They are tools that kids play around with, but they also have some real world applications such as the ones mentioned in Joy

ce’s post. It’s up to us as educators to introduce students to these applications, so they can go beyond the “playing” stage. Our students are going to have to be able to track lots of information. They are going to need to know how to communicate with team members in other countries. They need to know that the tools they are playing around with today can be used in many different ways.

Joyce’s idea of having the students use iGoogle to create their own information spaces is brilliant and I love the concept of having widgets for all of our information sources. Some of our database providers are now offering RSS feeds, which is great – but being able to choose sources and put all the search boxes on your own personalized page – that would be fantastic.

So many possibilities to consider…

 

Google – Beach Theme
Originally uploaded by miss_rogue.