Thing Eight

Thing Eight – Dribbling Lessons for Information Literacy

Yesterday, we began our research unit and I used a number of “dribbling” lessons together to create a packet of material from which to jump off of. I ended up using the teacher guide to plagiarism proof assignments in a slightly different way. Since they were nearly all good ideas anyway, I read over all sixteen of them with my students and had them rank the top five most important to them if they were creating their own assignment. Overwhelmingly, number two was the top vote getter, telling me that students want choice and some control over what they are doing. One that surprised me by making the top five, at number four, was that they want to stress higher level thinking skills and creativity. They know that means more work for them, but they want that anyway. To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised by the results.
The rest of the dribbling exercises will be used throughout the week in an attempt to slowly come up with what Doug Johnson calls level three or four questions. For me and for the students, I explain them as being questions that make the subject personal (level three) or a matter of policy change (level four). Also, I decided to make this an I-search paper instead of traditional research. This is for multiple reasons. First, it will give the students the ownership and choice they asked for (They are also able to pick any topic they like as long as they can make a level three or four questions for it). Second, it will make it virtually impossible for them to effectively plagiarize. Third, it focuses more on the process than the product, which is the point, by my estimation. Personally, I am ready for this assignment to fail as I have never done anything like it before, though I think the level of investment I’ve seen in the students so far is promising that it may succeed. Perhaps, I just mean that I am not setting expectations as to how the final product will turn out.