Reflective Searching
I see myself as a pretty accurate
researcher. As, I stated in my discussion posts I am known to my circle as the
lady that can find anything at anytime using a search engine. Google is the
only search engine I use (yes i'm apart of the "google generation").
I found the "Information
Behavior of the Researcher of the Future" a very informative read. The
article reached many valid points from which I agree. According to the text, the
term "google generation" is a phrase given to young age people (born
after 1993) or as I like to say "millenials". Yes, I am one of those
millenials that's always on their phone, checking their social media, group
chatting with friends, taking selfies, etc. Yes, I use my iPhone for
everything, where to eat, how to get around my city, order food, etc. In agreement
with the article, our information fluency skills have deteriorated because of
the abundance of accessible information. I feel like growing up during the age
of technology has handicapped our minds to store information – we aren’t
learning information about a topic, we are remembering it, which makes a huge
difference for k-12 learners in the classroom. In my classroom I have a class
set of Chromebooks and each one of my students could find almost anything on
the Chromebook, whether they are struggling learners, Tier 1 ESOL learners, or
gifted. Each and every student knows how to research information using a
Chromebook. I had to literally give my students a lesson about how to use a
dictionary because they have also defined words using technology.
Next. I want to briefly dwell on skill gaps.
According to the text one area of current interest, and, indeed, concern, is the
way young people evaluate-or rather fail to evaluate- information from electronic
sources. I see this much more frequently with students born after 2003. Most of
their life has been involving technology so the ability to function with lack
of or to decipher between quality information is minimal.
About 4 out of 26 of my students
have a public library card. People used to go to the library and access books
for research but due to the fact that research is so accessible I think they
will eventually do away with books and it is scary thought.
Personally, being a “google
generation” member I believe that my research has gotten lazier and effortless
over the years. Since research is abundant, I feel the need to type in one word
and for Google to give me every piece of information about a topic. I found it
ironic that during the Google challenge that was not effective researching.
Based upon the information given in
the articles, I would classify myself as a horizontal
information seeker. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t enjoy reading (don’t
judge me- I’m a math and science person) or I prefer to fully comprehend information
I research or I am mentally exhausted. I do skim every piece of information and
gather the main ideas and use those ideas for my learning. I also enjoy comparing
different resources, I like to check consistency to always evaluate those
resources.
References
Information Behaviour of The Researcher of The Future. (2008). UCL, 1-35
References
Information Behaviour of The Researcher of The Future. (2008). UCL, 1-35
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Iman, your writing about students believing everything they read online really resonated with me. I currently teach 10th Grade ELA, so we do a lot of research. I was absolutely shocked at how many of them, even after supposedly learning "how to research" in 9th Grade, had never even heard of a database. So many of them resort to Google, and they do not know how to properly check that their sources are credible. I, too, find myself showing them just how easy it is to edit Wikipedia articles. I realize that Wikipedia does an excellent job of moderating their articles, but it is so difficult to trust that the information you are currently viewing is accurate. Something that I am realizing about myself is that I tend to trust information from Google without fact-checking. When I am doing research, I am incredibly careful, but I can see where my students might struggle. When Google is the only thing they know, and Google can be "trusted," we must be more diligent in our teaching of research techniques.
ReplyDeleteIt is very true that our lives have become dependent on technology. We have it all at our finger tips. Students do lack the knowledge in basic research skills. I literally laughed out loud at your comment about needing to teach you students how to use dictionary. This is definitely our society now and it's almost scary. I believe that it's still important to model the use of research because technology has made us lazy. Our students need to know how to effectively search and evaluate resources.
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