I attended the 2012 CSLA (California School Library Association) Conference in San Jose. The keynote speaker was Tasha Bergson-Michelson, one of the leading search educator and researcher in California. Librarian by profession, currently working for Google, Tasha advocates for teaching students effective ways of using tools and resourced such as Google and Wikipedia. Parents use these tools on a regular basis and sends positive messages to their children about their effectiveness. Many family decisions, trivial and important are made by Googling information online. When teacher librarians completely dismiss the values in these popular sites as bad search tools and unreliable sources, children receives mixed messages. Children don't inherently prefer authoritative sites for all of their inquiries, and will continue to use convenient tools such as Google and Wikipedia.
In addition to building content on Google's Search Education site (http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/), Tashia writes search techniques and information literacy:
Her article "Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know"
show her solid background as a school librarian. It is quite comforting to know that school librarians has a solid presence in the Google search design team.
Tasha also spoke about library as a place that cultivates a sense of wonder and creativity. She suggest that teachers and parents encourage students keep a "I wonder" diary. Turn in their daily random (and often interesting) questions and try to find answers as a class. I thought this would be a wonderful class project for all grade levels and many subjects.
In our small group conversations after class, Tasha also shared her thoughts on building kids' awareness of honoring other's work from early on. This way, when students reach middle school, learning to include formal bibliography in their writings would be more of an "organic process" than an artificial rule superimposed by their school librarians. She suggested that as soon as children start making books, they should be taught to include a tribute and/or acknowledgment page in their books. In other subjects, teachers can also incorporate an acknowledgement system. One example was a math teacher requiring his students to include an acknowledgement section after each question answered, noting those who helped with problem solving and checking answers.
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