Thing 8. Dribbling Lessons for Information Literacy

While assaying some of the "Content Area Informational Literacy Lessons" exemplars compiled by Metronet, I noticed a few things I would like to briefly discuss. As a social studies teacher, I accessed the U.S. History lesson entitled "Interactive Research: A Time Period in American History' created by Walter A. Freeman of the Nashua (NH-?) School District. The lesson is a very nice lesson, but I believe appropriate only for very high achieving students (AP or IB) with excellent technology skills. By the way, the lesson is found at the "Apple Learning Interchange 2007" website. Under the lesson's "Tools and Resources: Internet" section, I found two excellent articles by Robert Harris from "VirtualSalt" ("www.virtualsalt.com"). The first is "Evaluating Internet Research Sources" which again should probably be limited to very high level students. The second is an excellent guide for teachers titled "Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers." Unfortunately some of the other links that Freeman provides are no longer functional. These are located on the "Plagiarism Theme Page". However, an outstanding link concerning copyright is functioning. The link is "10 Big Myths About Copyright" by Brad Templeton (www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html). This is a nice handout for students and something all teachers should keep handy in their office and classroom. Also, I investigated the Government/Citizenship lesson. The lesson is "Get It on the Ballot!" and concerns election ballot referrenda and initiatives (excellent for a lesson on direct democracy). It is found at the PBS web site (www.pbs.org). This lesson can be utilized by a wider variety of students than the History lesson. However, I must make some comments about the "Online Resources" section. There are four online resources listed. Two of the four, the"Ballot Initiative Strategy Center" (www.ballot.org), and "Fair Vote: The Center for Voting and Democracy" (www.fairvote.org) are "progressive" (left of center) advocacy groups. Thus, to present balance for the lesson, a teacher should search for "conservative" (right of center) groups. The other two resources are excellent and objective: the "Institute & Referendum Institute" at the University of Southern California (www.iandrinstitute.org/ballotwatch.htm) and the Federal Elections Commission (www.fec.gov). drfaust