Learning about Information at Science

Students who know how to apply Information skills to core subjects can

• find the information they need
• evaluate information sources
• cite sources and create a list of Woks Cited 
• use appropriate technology tool for processing information (EasyBib EDU)

The more these skills are practiced the faster they become a learning habit and ease  student life.

Check some pictures taken during our mini lessons - https://goo.gl/photos/GnDtnCrXCAUvgLtS8

Learning about Information Literacy

This year, information literacy mini lessons started with a Kahoot game on Library digital collections. Playing in groups in always cool and engages Eighth graders in an investigation of library collections.

You would be surprised how much students remember and how much more they are ready to learn.

Media and Information Literacy in Science 8

Preparing to their work on background information for Science Fair projects Middle School students review how to find, evaluate, organize and cite facts and data. As the result of their learning, students have created short presentations that will help them and their classmates remember the strategies learned and practiced in class.

See more photographs on Google+

Close Reading in Middle School Science Classes

Students dig deep to understand complex informational texts and sum them up precisely.

This year, our goal is to help students perceive meaning of scientific texts kids read on the subject matter and be able to summarize complicated texts to demonstrate their understanding when they look for background information to back their lab results and Science Fair projects.



Students analyze texts and pay close attention to details they would otherwise skip if not having proper support from their science teacher and information literacy specialist.
 

Through collaboration, Mr. Ratner and Ms. Bee apply the close reading strategy to implicitly broaden kids' background, improve their understanding and raise their curiosity.

Among learning approaches used in class are brainstorming, identifying and using new vocabulary, small groups discussions, writing summaries and creating proper citations. Students acquire and practice necessary skills to effectively achieve positive results in their future research works and Science Fair projects that are coming SOON!

Read with a question in mind

startimes.com

This is a reminder and tip for those who work on research projects:

Merge your own thinking with information found in informational books.

It's so easy to get lost in an ocean of sources! What information to pick? Does it support your idea? Is it a fact or opinion? Who is talking about it?Is it biased?

eagleman6788.com

Stop, think, and react on what you have found. Does it answer your research question?

 
Summarize, paraphrase, and quote with proper citations to avoid copyright infringement.

Academic Integrity

http://airs.library.qut.edu.au/8/1/

In the world of the Internet and  in the time when we all depend on information online, it's very important to learn dealing with information ethically and fair. We can't escape using someone else ideas and thoughts and we are expected to. In contrary, we base our original thoughts on previous knowledge. We synthesize information found in various sources and construct new knowledge.

The word plagiarism comes from the Latin word plagiārius that means "kidnapper". It was first used by a Roman poet and epigrammatist Marcus Valerius Martial who made a request that , 
If you want the poems to be yours, buy this book so they won't be mine (Adapted from Martial's Epigrammata, Book 1 (1.29)).


Academic Integrity means honesty, accuracy, fairness, collegiality, transparency, humanity and duty.When working with sources, we have to be careful and fair and to acknowledge the work of others by citing and referencing sources.

Following high research standards we make research meaningful. We establish a culture of problem solving and decision making and learn how to give credits to the authors of the texts, even when we paraphrase their sentences.

Honesty, accuracy, fairness, collegiality, transparency, humanity and duty are essential qualities are essential and they make us global citizens. It is our responsibility to know 10 types of plagiarism and ways to fight them.  See materials on plagiarism prevention on Plagiarism 101.

Web search for Middle School students: choose right keywords for an adequate web site retrieval

http://searchenginewatch.com

Educators don't have a problem to describe  keywords as significant words or phrases that identify the topic of a research. We teach students to put keywords in a search bar of a search engine, catalog or a database. However, Middle School students often complain that they have too many results and it's hard to find adequate articles. Librarians provide young adults with more specific recommendations to help them find relevant information.

Librarians suggest:

• Before conducting a research, students make a list of questions they try to answer and collect information for. Examine these questions and identify keywords.
• Relevancy of retrieved web sites depends on what words students have inserted in the search bar and in what order. A keyword headache brings different searches from the results produced by the phrase my head hearts. A keyword dentist retrieves distinct results from those that come as a result for a search for a tooth doctor .
•  Before they start research, students should think either they need facts or opinion and either they need to provide a variety of points of view. 
•  Are they collecting statistics, lesson plans, discussions?
•  Remind the students how search engines work: Web pages are tagged and described in metadata to make them searchable by search engines. If the words chosen by a researcher don't bring helpful web sites, we suggest that students use synonyms and related words .
• General keywords bring a great number of web sites while focused keywords will limit the number of websites, sometimes more than it is desired. Special terminology  retrieves highly professional articles.Using both types of keywords in the search bar is the best way to find relevant information.
•   It is recommended to use 5-7 keywords in the search session. Google brings web sites that contain the most of the keywords entered. 

Hopefully, these tips will help your Middle School students find relevant information and grow as web detectives.