Searching Smarter

I don’t know about you, but I conduct at least one Google search a day. It seems like there is always something I want to learn more about or need to find information about. I’ve learned that there are a few techniques that you can do in any simple search to improve your search results and cut down on the time you spend looking through information that is irrelevant to your search quest. Try these tricks the next time you search for anything online.

If you want to skip reading any further, you can watch a helpful little video that one of my peers at school put together for an assignment. She does a wonderful job of explaining and depicting everything I’m about to talk about. You can check out the video here: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~kreiber/karen.wmv .

Use quotes. By putting your search terms in quotation marks you are letting the search engine know that you want to find only results in which each of your terms appears in that exact order. This can be particularly helpful when looking for terms such as “French Restoration,” “human rights,” or “affirmative action.” Each of these terms, if placed on their own would result in a large number of useless results, but when placed in quotation marks greatly limits the options to those most relevant.

Use “Boolean Operators.” Boolean Operators are the following three words: and, or, not. When used properly, these can go a long ways towards improving your search capabilities. And can be used to limit a search, or can expand a search, and “not” can serve to limit a search. By placing these operators between your search terms (for example: endangered AND birds) you can help improve your search. Also, if you notice, many more formal, advanced search engines, such as the ones you might find at a library catalog already provide you with Boolean Operators to select from.

Use “site:” By attaching the word “site:” at the end of any search query and then including a domain extension, such as .com, .org, .gov, or .edu, you can limit your search and increase the reliability of the results. For example, if I was researching the French Revolution, but only wanted information from a school website I would type the following into my search bar: “French Revolution” site: .edu. This would give me results that only came from sites designated as “educational” and would limit my search to results which only had French and Revolution right next to each other.

Use a minus sign. Did you know that after any search query you can include a minus sign plus another term? This means that you want to exclude that secondary term from your search. I did this just the other day when I was looking for an image of the Australian bush country. I conducted my search in Google Images and originally searched the terms: Australian bush. I found that most of the results included George Bush, not at all what I wanted. So, I changed my search to read: Australian Bush –George. This narrowed my search, but then I found that most of the images were of the recent fires that crossed the Australian outback. I redefined my search to read: Australian Bush –George –fire. This gave me good results and I was able to quickly find the image I wanted.

Don’t ask questions. I know that “Ask Jeeves” has carved out a corner of the market by promoting this idea, but really, it is one of the worst ways to search on the internet. While the computer may be smart, you are smarter. Think about the question you are asking, extract the most important information and create a useful search question. Eliminate all insignificant words from your question (like, it, to, the) and focus on the nouns. Transitioning from “What impact does the government have on global warming?” to “Global Warming” government impact site: .gov will limit your search results from about 5 million to 500,000, not to mention increase the validity of your results. Despite the drastic difference it makes, you’d be surprised how many students just blindly type in their search question, rather than think about the actual query they are creating.

Hopefully, as you put these simple search techniques to use you can not only improve your own internet research capabilities, but pass on some good hints to your children.

What is Information Literacy?

It doesn’t take much observation of teenagers to recognize that they feel comfortable with technology. They can text, update their MySpace page, and download songs to their I-Pod in a flash.

What is a bit more surprising, researchers are finding, is that these same students struggle when faced with using a search engine to find a reliable website, or determining the validity of a web site, or navigating through search results. In fact, studies show that, “today’s undergraduates are generally far less prepared to do research than were students of earlier generations, despite their familiarity with powerful new information-gathering tools” (Breivik).

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and a necessity in the business and economic work force. Today’s work environment requires employees to be able to manage large amounts of information in order to maintain a “strategic advantage in today’s global market” (Breivik). With such rapid changes in technology, teachers and educators are beginning to realize that, while students may be familiar with technology, they are not proficient at learning how to use it. In other words, today’s youth are not information literate.

In January of 1989, the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy offered this definition of the term: “to be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (Leininger). Essentially, information literate people have learned how to learn. (If you're interested in what exactly students are expected to be able to do, you can check out the standards here.) They also concluded that information literacy is a learned skill—a skill which are becoming “more and more important in our jobs as well as our daily lives” (Leininger).

Recognizing the importance of information literacy isn’t enough. A major problem is arising. Technology develops, but our academic curriculum isn’t aligning itself to meet these changing needs. In other words, today’s students aren’t receiving the direct instruction they need to become information literate and consequently, successful in a technology-rich world.

While teachers may assign research projects and librarians may teach students how to navigate the library catalog and locate a book on the shelf, no educator takes direct responsibility for teaching students how to evaluate, locate and judge the material they find online. This isn’t to say they don’t try, but with the ever-present pressures of standardized testing and curriculum alignment, there often isn’t time to present students with the instruction that they need.

Businesses and higher education have begun to recognize the importance of ascertaining a candidate’s information literacy before making decisions and hiring judgments. As a result, the Prinction-based educational Testing Service, who also creates the SAT and ACT exams, has begun creating tests designed to “grade students’ knowledge of the cyber world” (Heyboer). Their initial test results show were “shocking [because] students did not perform well.” They view the preliminary results of these tests as “a warning flag…and a cry for action” (Heyboer).

While we might not be preparing to enter the collegiate world or pursue and international banking career, having sound informational literacy skills can benefit us in our personal lives. Not only can we better improve our own ability to interact with and utilize technology, but we can make sure our children are gaining the skills they need to succeed. Being able to speak the language and reinforce what your children are learning in school can have a powerful effect.

Have you been looking for a new home? Comparing the safety ratings of car before making a new purchase? Contemplating the advantages of one car seat over another? Looking for reliable information on a political candidate and their policies? Helping a youngster learn about whale sharks for homework? Learning about a newly diagnosed medical condition? Whatever your informational need, strong informational literacy skills can help.

The purpose of this little blog mini-series is to help you become familiar with some of these skills, so that you can apply them to you and your family’s lives. In the upcoming posts we’ll learn how to improve our internet search quests, evaluate the information we find, protect ourselves from internet hazards, and find some valuable resources of information. Make sure to come back to learn more!

Leininger, Michele. Information Literacy and Public Libraries Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.webjunction.org

Breivik, Patricia Senn. (2005) 21st Century Learning and Information Literacy Change 37(2) 20-28.

Heyboer, Kelly. (2007) Tech-savvy kids? New test shows shortcomings in cyber literacy. http://www.ets.org/ictliteracy/demo.html

17 Ways to Improve Your Child’s Writing: Tips #1-7

By Terri Hessler

It might surprise you to find out that one of the last large writing studies conducted determined that students spend very little time in school on paragraph-length or longer writing (Applebee, 1981). It is common for longer writing pieces to be assigned to be written out of class because of the time constraints of the classroom. Without providing students time to write in the presence of an instructor or peers from whom they can gain feedback, direction, and/or support, students miss out on the social aspect of writing and opportunities to improve their writing. It is clear to me that I’m going to have to supplement the writing experiences of my child throughout her academic career so that she is prepared for the rigors of college writing. Here is a list of ways to improve a child’s writing as she progresses through elementary and middle school. I think that summer is an especially good time for supplemental writing activities because it promotes the maintenance of an academic routine.

Most of these tips are grounded in a finding from a large scale study conducted on written expression outcomes during the 70’s and 80’s. Hillocks (1986) found that longer writing received higher scores/grades/marks than shorter writing. Unfortunately, many students with written expression deficits write very little. While it is counterproductive and naïve to think that writing more words will produce a better writing piece, it is the first step in getting students to write higher quality pieces. These tips can be easily implemented at home and center primarily on the idea that writing more helps children (and adults) write better. If you are interested in improving your own writing, several of these can be adapted for your use (e.g., #1, #3, #6, #7, #8, #12, #13, #15). Next month’s column will contain the remainder of the tips.

1. Schedule daily writing time
Get your child used to the idea that a writing assignment doesn’t necessarily have to be completed in one sitting and that, in fact, it may seem less insurmountable to “attack” a writing task a little bit at a time for several days instead of all at once.

2. Use fully developed prompts
Providing explicit instructions will both increase the amount a student writes and the quality of the written product. A typical writing prompt might read something like this: Write a 3-5 page paper on the use of submarines in the Civil War. This type of prompt gives the student little direction and encompasses a topic so large as to be daunting. How much more focused and organized the resulting paper would be if the student is instructed instead to write a 3-5 page paper on the use of submarines in the Civil War. Be sure to include information on a) how submarines were constructed at that time in history, b) which side utilized them to a greater degree and did either have any help from other countries, and c) how the outcome of the war might have been different without them.

Even for younger children, providing direction/advice in the prompt can be helpful. Tell about a time you were embarrassed could be replaced with Tell about a time you were embarrassed. Who was around? Where were you? What happened?

3. Teach your child to self-graph
Self-graphing the number of words written can be motivating for some students (Brigham, Graubard, & Stans, 1972). A child could also count and graph number of correctly spelled words and number of new or different words. Public posting of graphs could encourage him or her to beat previous scores for a “personal best.” Friends and relatives (e.g., grandma, primary teacher, older brother) can be recruited to notice and praise “personal bests.”

4. Teach strategies with mnemonics
Many writing process strategies involve easy-to-remember mnemonics that can be posted on a wall or ‘fridge, or printed on laminated cards for portability. Some examples are:
TREE
develop Topic sentence
include Reasons to support premise
Examine the soundness of each supporting reason
create an Ending for the paper (Graham & Harris, 1989)

PLAN
Pay attention to the prompt
List main ideas
Add supporting details
Number your ideas (De La Plaz, 1999)

For simple editing, teach children to use COPS for checking
Capitalization
Organization (paragraphing)
Punctuation
Spelling

5. Let child choose own topics
Allowing students to write about what they know may result in more text and in students caring more about the final product.

6. Use a topic jar
For some kids, deciding what to write is a big part of the problem. For them, use a large mouth Mason jar to hold writing topics written by both kids and adults. There are various commercial products available that provide lists of writing topics (e.g., The English Teachers Book of Lists). Allow child to both add to and pick from the jar.

7. Support and encourage brainstorming
The more time spent actively brainstorming, the better the finished product likely will be. Brainstorming can be adult-directed and merely conversational, or it can be more structured by using various graphic organizers, like webbing/bubbling, T-charts, or Venn diagrams.

Rhymes & Reasons

By Vilo Westwood

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man . . .

Rhymes are often one of the first things we share with our babies. They're fun, easy to remember, and children respond enthusiastically. For all these reasons rhymes are vitally important to children's further success with language. If children develop the ability to rhyme, it helps them read (looks like dime, it must be TIME!) and even spell. Most importantly, rhymes are fun. Word play creates warm, fuzzy feelings about language that makes children and adults want more and more.

Since they are easy to remember rhymes help children as they begin to talk.

Also, the classic nursery rhymes are building blocks for a lot of further literature experience. Kindergarten and first grade classes refer to these rhymes in many activities. Agatha Christie used nursery rhymes as starting points for many of her mysteries.

Feel you don't know many rhymes? Most libraries have anthologies of nursery rhymes (some with CDs) and some collections of action rhymes (ones that have motions and gestures). There are at least two collections of Spanish rhymes (also in English).

Vocabulary development

By Terri Hessler

Two researchers in the early ‘80s (i.e., Morris and Crump, 1982) discovered that students with learning disabilities were more likely to use fewer different words in their written expression than students without disabilities. They surmised that a lack of spelling ability could account for this, i.e., students with disabilities were more likely to use words they knew how to spell than “new” words, resulting in a repetition of easier-to-spell words. For example, a student might write the following:

I wulked to the store I din’t care. I wulked rite passed a big dog. I din’t see the big dog. I all most fell. He was a nice dog.

Other research (e.g., the body of work by Hart & Risley) indicates that the number of words a student is exposed to before the start of school correlates with 3rd grade academic achievement (i.e., higher number of words means higher academic achievement). So, to go back to the Morris and Crump study, perhaps students who are using fewer different words do not have a rich vocabulary from which to draw. Of course, Morris and Crump do not indicate if the students who used fewer different words had a richer oral vocabulary than their written expression indicated. Interestingly, it is quite common for students who are identified with disabilities and who have deficits in written expression to tell stories and give verbal descriptions using at- or above-grade level vocabulary that does not seem to appear in their writing pieces. Such a student might tell the story in the example given above like this:

“I strolled to the store casually, not caring about anything. I walked right past a mammoth of a dog (a Harlequin Great Dane, I think) without seeing him because I was absorbed in my thoughts. I almost tripped over him, but he didn’t even growl. That dog had a calm disposition.”

Notice that not only is the vocabulary more varied and advanced, but the description is longer and more involved. Shorter writing pieces are a classic characteristic of students with disabilities, especially those who have deficits in written expression.

So the short and simple message for this month is to help your child develop a better vocabulary and help him or her to learn to spell the words he or she uses.

One way I do the former (i.e., develop better vocabulary) with Carmi is to talk, sing, and read to her as much as possible. The landmark longitudinal study by Hart & Risley isolated as many variables as possible to determine that the number of words a child hears by the time he/she is 3 correlates with 3rd grade academic achievement. By doing so, the results showed that there is a 30 million word gap in the number of words a child of low SES (socioeconomic status) is exposed to compared to a child of high SES. Education researchers have long known that districts with high numbers of poor kids have lower achievement outcomes than students in more affluent districts (e.g., Columbus Public Schools compared to Upper Arlington City Schools). My translation of this is not that people need to be in high SES before having kids or even that they need to move to UA or Bexley or Dublin or New Albany before their kids start school. The take-home for me is that I need to make sure my child hears as many words as possible by the time she turns 3.

I knew of this study when we first brought Carmi home, but I didn’t get serious about it until she was about 6 months old. I just couldn’t get used to talking, singing, and reading to a being who didn’t reciprocate in some way. My bad. I lost a lot of time, I think. Fortunately, Russ is an incessant talker so I think he is more than making up for lost time. Take note: Television doesn’t count! There has to be interaction along with the exposure to the words.

For the latter (i.e., learn to spell the words she uses), I haven’t read the research on this. I’m not even sure there is research on this. So what I’m doing is helping Carmi become familiar with word families. One of our favorite programs to watch with her right now is Super Why? on PBS. In this show, one of the main characters is Wonder Red (in reference to Little Red Riding Hood, I think) who has Word Power, which is essentially an affinity for word families, such as ar words like far, car, jar or at words, like mat, cat, bat. So Carmi and I (and Russ does this, too, so there’s consistency) will occasionally sing the song on the show with new words. I know you won’t be able to imagine the tune, but if you go to www.pbskids.org/superwhy you might be able to find it there, but also watching it just once (9 a.m. on ch. 34/WOSU) will cause it to stick in your head (it’s one of those kinds of jingles). Just pick a word (one syllable works best), and think of another word that rhymes with it. I’ll use the word cap. A word that rhymes with cap is tap. The lyrics go like this: “Cap, tap, cap. Wonderific, you’re terrific, cap, tap, cap, wonderific, you’re terrific, cap!” After Carmi and I sing the song, I try to think of and say as many of the words in that word family as I can (e.g., flap, gap, lap, map, nap, rap, sap). I try to do this when I’m in the car with Carmi, because I tend to gravitate towards listening to talk radio, which probably isn’t much fun for her. It’s also a better alternative for me than tapes of kid songs, which I can only listen to one or two time through before my ears start to bleed.

I try to remember to connect all the phoneme practice with anything we read. I’m not very good at that, but I’m trying. And I’m certainly not systematic about it either. She’s only just now starting to say a lot of words spontaneously so it might get to be more fun as she joins in.

I also try to work on phoneme practice every chance I get. This will help her be ready to read, but I also believe it may help with spelling later. Phonemes are simply the smallest sound segments in our language, like the sounds the individual alphabet letters make. According to some research that I find compelling, it’s more important for a child to learn what sounds the letters make than to learn what the letter names are. The way I give Carmi extra phoneme practice now is in the bath tub with foam letters. I’ll hold up the letter C for example, and then I’ll say (very enthusiastically) something like “This is the letter C, Carmi! Your name starts with C! C makes the /k/ sound. Can you say /k/?” Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s a very low pressure activity, and I do my best to make it a short activity and fun.

Beginning Reading to Baby

By Andrea Jeppesen

“It’s never too early to begin reading to your baby.” I tried to read to my newborn, Jonas, but lagged off a little until he was about 4 months old (and I could get my feet on the ground). When I finally began reading to Jonas again, I was surprised at how attentive he was to books.

Here are a few reasons why experts say that “It’s never too early . . ."

from the moment babies are born, they are learning the different sounds of the human language

talking and reading to your baby can help her prepare for later reading activities

reading can be part of a wonderful nap/bedtime routine

a routine early on, will help make reading to your growing baby a natural part of the day

Babies love:

simple, brightly colored shapes (newborns can easily distinguish between black and white contrast)

rhythm

rhyme

repetition

Some of my favorite baby books:

Black on White by Tara Hoban (contrast, simple shapes)

White on Black by Tara Hoban (contrast, simple shapes)

Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (rhythm, rhyme, repetition)

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins (rhythm, rhyme, repetition)

Hush, Little Baby by Sylvia Long (rhythm, rhyme, repetition)

What are some books that your baby has enjoyed?

Stages of Baby and Child Reading

By Vilo Westwood

A handout I came across recently described the stages of baby, toddlerhood and preschooler with these main tasks: Bond (1-4 mos.), Explore (4-18 mos.), Pretend (18 mos. to 3 yrs) and Learn (4 & 5 years). (The ages vary widely and the stages overlap.) These tasks are evident as we begin to teach our children to love books and reading.

Very young babies enjoy being with their parents and as they become aware of their surroundings they take some interest in books. They love to hear your voice, whether you are talking to them, singing, reading a book or reciting nursery rhymes. As babies become more active they explore books. They try to grab them, put them in their mouths, chew them, exclaim over the pictures, throw them. Many children this age (and older!) are impatient with going sequentially through a book. They want to skip ahead, go back to a favorite picture several times, look at two pages and move on to the next book. They are exploring books rather than reading them.

As children move more into the Pretend stage, books become very important. Books help children imagine worlds far from their daily realities and pretend about animals in a jungle, sheep on a farm, and many things that could not really happen. Children love to hear the same books again and again and again. There are many reasons for this, but one is that they love a particular imaginary world and want to visit often. Finally, children begin avidly learning about everything around them. They want to know why things happen, how they happen, all the facts about dinosaurs, or weather, or a favorite TV show. More and better nonfiction books (informational books) are available for young children.

Whatever the age or stage of your child, the most important thing a parent can do is make time spent together with books warm, fun, safe. Give children lots of opportunities to bond, explore, pretend and learn with books at their own pace, with some influence of your tastes and your pace and your desire to move page by page through a book.

Introduction to "Write On!"

By Terri Hessler

I'm a bit of a writing freak, as any of my former students (college, high school, or middle school) will tell you. I think it is a critical skill for two reasons. First, effective communication is just plain efficient. Say what you gotta' say (or in this case, write what you gotta' write) and if you do it with correct usage and mechanics, you save the reader time and effort in receiving the message. With the advent of electronic communication, that concept has not changed. If anything, it is more important because writing as a form of communication is more commonplace than it ever was. Sure, my parents wrote letters to each other once a week while Dad was stationed in Germany at the end of WWII, and people regularly sent various other kinds of mail (what we call snail mail now) but nowadays, people blog, email, text, chat, and greet (with electronic greeting cards) daily or in many cases, hourly! These participants in the modern-era writing community are more numerous and younger than they ever were in the era of snail mail. Though the mode of writing has changed, as well as its form, it still serves the same function: communication. And now, more than ever, people write what they want to communicate in more concise ways. Text messaging is the perfect example of this. I love it that text messaging seems more popular than phone calling! The "power of the pen" may have been replaced by the non-QWERTY cell phone keypad, but the word still rules, even if the word is now a mishmash of letters and symbols.

The second reason I think writing is a critical skill is because I believe that writing is a tool for learning. I know this to be true from my own experience as a student (and I've got many, many years of that experience) and as a teacher (11+ and counting). There is nothing more useful to me when trying to get my brain around a concept than writing about it. Writing helps clarify my position/viewpoint/understanding (or lack thereof) on complex—and maybe not so complex—topics. I can't explain how it does, but it does. I would guess that writing makes me use a cognitive function not otherwise accessed or maybe use cognition in a different way. All I know is that writing about something leads me to a fuller understanding of whatever it is I am writing about. It is because of this reason (that writing is a tool for learning) that my research focus is improving written expression in children with deficits in that area, particularly students with learning disabilities and those at-risk for being identified with learning disabilities.

I learn a little bit about writing by the research I do, but I learn a lot more by reading the existing research literature in my field. I like it that I can share what I learn with people I know so that it can help them if they have children who struggle with writing. This blog is another opportunity for me to do that. Every month or so, I'll share a strategy that can help improve written expression specifically, and academic performance in general.

In this column, I'll share that the commonly accepted adage that "practice makes perfect" applies somewhat to written expression in as much as it's perfect practice. Thus, my mantra is "perfect practice makes perfect." It's not very efficient to practice errors, which is what students do who produce a lot of writing but do not get any or much feedback. So, while it's good to write a lot when you're learning how to write, someone needs to be giving lots of positive feedback as well as targeted corrective feedback. Since church leaders have consistently encouraged journal-writing, members have the perfect opportunity to have their children practice a gospel principle while improving an academic skill. Maybe you could have a family journal that everyone takes a turn writing in, perhaps a different person each week. During family home evening, that person can read their journal entry aloud to their natural audience. Later in the week, in private and one-on-one, a parent can give lots of ebullient praise and target one item for improvement. Perhaps there's a word that was misspelled, or a comma misused, or a word not capitalized. Have the child correct the error right there in the journal and encourage him or her to pay attention to that skill the next time.

Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of attention to correction, to which I say, "Pshaw!" If you were teaching that child to play the piano, you would correct a note delivery error. If you were teaching that child to swing a baseball bat, you would correct his or her swing form. Why are academic skills any different? I say they are not, and in fact, are more critical. We don't need to fear harming our child's self-esteem with correction as long as it's delivered matter-of-factly and with kindness. I argue that a child's self-esteem improves with success, not vice-versa.

That's all for this month; write on!