Last week I started reading a little of Harry Potter to my seven yr old grandson. I
hadn't gotten too far when he asked me "Grandma is this true?" I said no it was
just a made up story. He said "oh then it's fiction!" (Wow) I then asked him what
the other kind of books are and he told me that true books were called non-fiction.
( No he didn't learn it from the librarian- they don't have one- but from a very
special teacher)
This week I am doing a library orientation/introduction to research with our ninth
graders. What we thought might take a day or two at most ( the library orientation
part)has stretched out to a full week as they struggle with what seems to be easy
tasks-find a book on the shelf-tell what books from a list can't be checked out,
find and use an online dictionary from a preselected site. Anyway, the first day I
asked the inevitable fiction/non-fiction question. In one class the only one that
tried to answer had it wrong. I mentioned this to Paul, that he knew something that
some high school kids didn't know. Last Friday he had the day off and wanted to
know if he could come to school with me. Why? So he could meet that girl and tell
her the difference between fiction and non-fiction!
I can't decide why these kids are struggling so but it seems to be a combination of
lack of skills, not following directions, not reading directions and expecting to
have the answer leap off the page or screen and scream "write me down" Another
example:
we sent the kids to a specific site and asked the "how far is it from Hopkins to
Philadelphia"
After being told that all answers were on the selected site, one pair typed "how
far is it" into Google. This takes you to a tourist site from Bali. There is a
place there to type in two cities and mileage comes back. Unfortunately the Bali
tourist site thinks it is 500 some miles while Rand McNally says it is over 700
miles. So next week when we talk about web evaluation we'll discuss how these two
young ladies are now stranded somewhere near the Pennsylvania border with no gas
money! But of course this is the tech savvy generation.
Funny in a way but also sad.
Darlene Yasick
Media Specialist
Hopkins (MI) High School
lib027yas@global.net
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