Transcribed notes from Mike Eisenberg's MSLMA Seminar

[JCONSTANT@UMASSD.EDU]

Dear LM_NET Colleagues,

After attending Mike Eisenberg's Seminar at the MSLMA Fall Conference in
October, I typed my notes and sent him a copy. I also asked for his
permission to send a copy of the notes to LM_NET. I'm so happy that he has
agreed to let me share the following notes with you:

_______________________________________________________________________
MSLMA Fall Conference, 1994        Sturbridge, Massachusetts

Sunday, October 23, 1994
All Day Seminar with Dr. Michael Eisenberg, Director of the ERIC
Clearinghouse on Information and Technology at Syracuse University

Curriculum Initiative in Action: Agenda and Strategy

Dr. Eisenberg has worked with both the Cambridge and Lynn Library Power
Programs in the public schools.. He did pilot studies on the Big Six Skills
with 30 classes, grades k-9, so his presentation is a result of both theory
and practice.

Teaching Techniques:  A R C S  Model  by John Keller

Get their            ATTENTION, and sustain it
Make presentation    RELEVANT to student needs
Instill              CONFIDENCE (Student feels he CAN)
Produce              SATISFACTION (Was workshop worth
                          price of admission?)

We are faced with an information overload which taxes our ability to access,
process and retrieve it.

Information process has three basic components:
Beginning           Middle              End
What do I have      The doing           Evaluation
to do? What
will the product
look like?

Dr. Eisenberg breaks information into six basic steps:

1. Task Definition (What do I know, what do I need to know?)

2. Information seeking (What kinds of resources or tools would best fill my
need?

3. Location and Access: Actually finding the sources and information within
them. Librarians traditionally emphasize this step more than any others. They
show students how to use the various indexes (Catalog, Readers Guide, etc.)

4. Use of the Information . Engaging it (reading, viewing, hearing the
material) and extracting relevant information for my needs.(note cards, video
segments, etc.)  Eisenberg commented that there are more videorecorders than
phones in our homes, and that more libraries have well developed video
collections.

5. Synthesis: Organizing information from multiple sources (by note cards, by
highlighting photocopies, by scripting video segments, etc.) Eisenberg noted
that many students now use the photocopy method of extracting information,
and that library media centers need photocopying machines.  Another method of
extracting relevant information is to cut and paste from online sources.
Mike suggested that we  create a broad outline before going online, and then
cut and paste to appropriate parts of the outline. Presentation could take
many forms: printed reports, oral presentations with visuals, video footage,
Hypercard stacks, etc.

Eisenberg states that we must convince teachers to slow down. If the process
of researching requires two weeks, but the teacher only wants to spend one
week we need to help the teacher see that the process is actually more
important. Experiment. Have students research and list their sources. Have
them pick out what is important. An exercise to teach this is to photocopy a
page from a source and pass the page out to each student. Give each one a
highlighter, and have each student highlight what is most important on the
page. You can redo this activity to boil it down.

When they are in first grade, have students list the page where they got the
answers to an assignment on the back of the assignment sheet. This helps to
teach them to document at an early age.

One example of an assignment:  Give the first graders ten vocabulary words to
define. They can get the answers anywhere they like, from their text, the
dictionary, a thesaurus, or even from Mom. They could tape record Mom's
answers if she is busy fixing dinner. They might learn that another human
being can be a source, but that the information may or may not always be
reliable. If Mom gives them the definition of an octopus, they should
document the source by writing down  "Mom..." where the citation should be.

Citations in students' texts are a more important assessment tool for their
ability and success levels than a bibliography at the end of their reports.
Citations help us to do authentic assessments.

They can even document pictures or information they have seen on TV. If they
are to draw a picture of a sign of spring, and they draw a tree in bloom that
they have seen on TV, they can write on the reverse of the drawing:
"Source:TV..."

6. Evaluation:
At the completion of the product, students need to judge two things:
     A. the effectiveness of the product (Could they have done it better and
how?)
     B. The efficiency of the information problem-solving process (How could
the process have been better? Could they have done it faster, more
thoroughly, etc.?)

Note:Some of the participants mentioned that we do a certain amount of
evaluation when we go through the five previous steps. For example, when we
define a problem, determine a range of sources, access and extract
information and organize it. (Eisenberg's example would be determining that
we need to buy a car, and  considering factors such as cost, repairs,
dealerships, purchasing agents, etc.) These should be differentiated from the
sixth evaluation step, which judges the overall project and process.


The SCANS Report ( U.S. Department of Labor. Secretary's Commission on
Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991)  lists information competencies as
requisite Skills.

Peter Drucker said:" Executives may be computer literate, but not information
literate". (Wall Street Journal, 1993)

The use of information is a context for decision making. The application of
information is more than just reading comprehension. It involves organizing
and presenting the information, and often involves a continuous loop where we
go back to previous steps to reevaluate and reorganize.


Participants then examined several examples, and did various  exercises in
which they determined where various activities fit into the Big Six Skills
framework. An activity that illustrated some of the concepts was the
assignment in which students could investigate dinosaurs and report using
written presentation, a three dimensional model, or a wall mural. These
activities are examples of Step 5: Synthesis.

Interviews are another example of synthesis. Students have to prepare
questions before the interview, and research the subject. The taped interview
is their synthesized product.

Participants have permission to reproduce handouts from this seminar,
provided they cite Dr. Eisenberg.

LUNCH BREAK

We continued the activities in our handouts. Mike advocated that we teach
students terms such as " synthesize". so that we would one day all have the
same frame of reference.  One school had student buttons that read, "I'm a
synthesizer."  Eisenberg's second book, Information Problem-Solving,
elaborates on these ideas and class activities. Eisenberg and Berkowitz are
working on a new  book entitled, "Learning and Teaching in the INformation
Age".  They have  also  planned a book for parents entitled, "Helping With
Homework".

Eisenberg likes to think of information professionals as "Information
Doctors" who diagnose student information needs and use the Big Six Skills to
help them solve information problems.

90% of our present curriculum focuses on the Location and Access skills. We
need to place more emphasis on  Task Determination. When we define a problem,
we are defining the task and possible sources of information for the task.
Place the following sign in your library media center:
     ______________________________________
     WE INTERPRET ASSIGNMENTS
     _____________________________________

We need to insure that our students can use a range of resources, and that
they can integrate them in a product.

Examples of Big Six Activities:
-How do you select a birthday gift for someone?

It helps if we and the teachers all use the same terms with students, ie
defining task, etc.

If students have trouble writing a thesis statement, make this their
information problem. They will determine it as they go through the six steps
and their end product will become the thesis statement. Focus more on the
process.

When we teach information problem-solving, it is not so important to teach
how to use a particular tool, because they are changing so rapidly. CDROM
will soon change format from single cd to higher density ones. Other forms of
information storage are also likely to appear. Nor is it always going to be
necessary to teach the peculiarities and search terms for each database or
system. With the advent of Z39.50 interface, there is supposed to be a common
command language that will allow us to use the same or similar commands for
any online database.

Gopher is really a connected table of contents, and not an efficient
information seeking tool. The Internet is valuable in that it does break down
barriers of space and time.

The group then did worksheets on the big six skills and technology.

Library media specialists need to work with teachers to achieve full
collaboration and coordination of student projects. When computers are
limited, use a stations approach, and rotate groups so that all get to use
computers.


Integrating the Big Six Skills into the Curriculum:
We need to know what the curriculum is. It is basically the subject content
and skills on which students are evaluated. We learn this through students'
assignments, teacher assignments, curriculum guides, state guides, etc.
Library media specialists should set up curriculum "maps" to identify where
the information skills are being infused into the curriculum. (See handouts
and/or text, Curriculum Initiative, for examples of curriculum maps.)

We want to make students more effective and efficient users of information,
so general orientations to the library media center should be avoided,
because they are teaching the skills out of context. We need to do the
orientations in the context of an assignment. Mapping helps us to document
what we do and provides us with accountability. It also helps us to teach
information skills in assignments where we can reach the greatest number of
students, and where we can go into greater depth.

Eisenberg then showed us a scope and sequence chart that was aligned with a
curriculum "map".  Examples of these are found in his text, Curriculum
Initiative, and in handouts at the seminar.

We can create the same kinds of charts for reading guidance, and other
services we perform.  We need to collaborate with teaching staff to align
schedules so that we can work together to help students. We should ask each
teacher to fill out a brief form telling us about one research unit or
project that they might like to do. We compile all of these and make a
chronological database of possible topics. We then analyze them to determine
where we can make the most impact and teach the most students about the big
six skills. We want to reach a lot of kids, and have them spend enough time
on the unit to really do the task definition, extraction of material,
synthesis and evaluation steps that help them to become critical thinkers and
problem solvers.

Lure the teachers to the library media center  with the services aspect of
our job, and then get them involved in projects. Work with the willing ones
first, and the rest will eventually follow.

Library media specialists who collaborate with teachers on Big Six Skills
projects can share these units on LM_NET with other library media
specialists.

__________________________________________________________________
end of notes

                                               Best wishes,
                                               Jane Constant
                                               jconstant@umassd.edu