War Eagle Writers in the Research Sandbox, Part 1: Selecting and Narrowing a Topic, Presearch, Evaluating Information, and Generating Research Questions

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The research based writing unit for my 7th and 8th writing classes was one I would have preferred to have introduced earlier in the school year; however, I felt obligated to sequence and emphasize our units of study of informational and argumentative writing  in January, February, and March since they are a major part of the writing assessment on the state Milestones End of Grades test for all of my student students in grades 6, 7, and 8.

In this first post of two, I’ll outline how I introduced these skills to students:

• Brainstorming a topic.
• Narrowing topic choices by learning more about it through presearch.
• Generating different kinds of questions (10) for the same topic.
• Narrowing and selecting your top three choices for your research questions from your list of 10 (top 2 choices with the 3rd as your alternate).
• Understanding and using the CRAAP test to evaluate the quality and relevance of any information source.
• Using scholarly sources from GALILEO like SIRS Discoverer and Britannica as well as NewsELA.
• Tips for searching and using Google.

Though I knew we would not start the research unit of study until after our district spring break, we did not truly begin our research unit in earnest until after we finished the state Milestones testing.  Because of the way the tests had to be scheduled and because my classes are in the school’s “Connections” rotation as an academic elective, I did not see each class daily until testing ended; consequently, this scheduling pushed back our true start date.

Getting Started:  Brainstorming, Refining, and Selecting a Topic

However, I used this time during testing to give students a starting point with opportunities to think about research and  brainstorm possible topics of interest.  We did a Writer’s Notebook entry about prior research experiences to help me have a better idea of what they already knew and might want to know about research skills.

We also used this modified schedule time to brainstorm possible research topics of interest.  I kept things simple for both 7th and 8th graders by providing them this easy “Top 10” possible topics.   Some students had no problems generating ten topics while others struggled to come up even 2-3 ideas.  I encouraged students to discuss topic ideas, and I tried to conference 1:1 with students who were having difficulty to give them some questions to prompt or nudge their thinking.

Next, I asked students to select their topic 3 topic choices and to complete the following handout:

Here is a sample of student work (used with appropriate permissions):

The CRAAP Test and Presearch

Before introducing the presearch phase of our project, we spent about four days learning about the CRAAP test. After introducing the CRAAP test with a video and the checklist, we spent about three days doing small group, paired, and individual practice using the CRAAP test.  Students had opportunities to evaluate different resources and then share why they evaluated the assigned resource as they did.  I used our district Canvas platform to push out resources for evaluation to students:

Our culminating activity was the CRAAP Test Rumble, something I’ve done as a librarian in the past, but this year, I mixed it up and incorporated the “musical chairs” activity into it.  I set up 20 resources on a single research topic and question that I reviewed with the students along with the procedures for the activity.  I played music and once the music stopped, students had to stop at the nearest seat and evaluate the source.  With the four classes, I was able to do about three rounds of evaluation though one class was able to do four.

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Though I had worked incredibly hard to plan the activity in this format, I didn’t feel the students were as enthusiastic about it as my high school students were.  I don’t know if this activity is better suited to older teens, or if perhaps this group just wasn’t as confident since they had less experience with their research skills.  I do think that some students were a bit weary from the all testing of the previous week and a half, and I am sure this impacted the energy levels for some of my writers.

Introduction to Scholarly Sources and Search Tips for Google/The Open Web

Once we had selected our topic three topic choices, we were ready to begin presearch to learn more about the topics and decide which one would bubble up to the top for each student.  However, in order to do presearch, students needed some mini-lessons on scholarly sources and search tips for Google.  I realized very quickly that most of the students had little to no experience using either type of source or the search tips.

The other complicating issue was that our district did not have access to any scholarly resources outside of GALILEO, our state virtual library.  While GALILEO is a wonderful resource, it is heavily dominated by EBSCO databases, most of which are far above the reading level of my students; in addition, the search interface and filters are challenging for students, especially middle schoolers, to use.  I would have loved to have had access to some other databases besides EBSCO as I’ve had in other districts, but we did the best we could.

I used the research guide I created to show students how to navigate and use the different kinds of information sources; I broke these mini-lessons up over three days so that students had a chance to practice using the resources and ask questions.

Presearch Work:  Applying Our Search Skills and Evaluating Information Using the CRAAP Test

Once students were introduced to these sources, we captured our applied work with the presearch notetaking template:

Students had two choices for presearch and the presearch notetaking template:

1.  They could focus on their top topic if they felt pretty strongly about that top choice after doing the first round of topic narrowing (shown earlier in this post).
2. Students could take notes on all three topics or their top two choices if they needed to learn more about the topic and eliminate one of the choices with certainty.  I think it was important to offer this option because many students opted for this choice and felt better about their final topic choice after having room to explore and learn more details about two or all three of their top three topic choices.

Some students breezed through this work, and other struggled to complete even one.  I was intrigued that overall my 7th grade writers seemed to thrive more with the presearch work than the 8th grade writers.

Most students found Britannica and SIRS Discoverer to be the most helpful resources through GALILEO though some did find articles of interest (and that they could read) with my assistance from the EBSCO databases in GALILEO.  Most students actually did a great job of finding a good blend of scholarly resources as well as quality resources through Google; for some topics (like those related to travel), the open web was a better place to scour and vet quality resources.  Because my classes were fairly small (16-18), I was able to give each student personalized support and assistance during our presearch phase.

Using Our Presearch to Think Broadly and Deeply About Possible Research Questions for Our Final Topic

The primary purpose of presearch was to give students time and space to explore their topic(s) and to learn more to make an informed choice for the final topic.  However, I also wanted the presearch work to be a springboard to help students with our final and critical step of brainstorming questions about the selected topic.  I used an activity I modified from my friend Heather Hersey, who modified her version of the activity from Joyce Valenza.  I’ve used the “question lenses” activity in the past (see this version and this version).  However, I did some more significant modifications to the template and modeled my own research questions generated around a hypothetical research topic I had used as a model throughout our unit up to this point with the students.  Here is the handout and template I used as a model and as part of our mini-lesson:

Students needed about two days of class time (40 minutes per class session) to complete their own version of questions; I asked them to generate at least two questions in each category.  This activity definitely pushed their thinking and some even did some additional presearch as they worked on the activity to help them with the process.  This activity by far was the most challenging part of our research unit up to this point.  The goal was to get a total of 10 questions with 2 in each of the 5 question categories though they could do more.  Here is a sample of student work (used with appropriate permissions):

Once students completed their question chart and I had reviewed it with them individually, each student then selected his or her top three questions.  I told students they only had to write about two but to select three in case they decided they might need to abandon one of the research questions as we moved forward with additional research the following week.  Here is where students recorded and captured their top choices as well as thoughts on the kinds of writing they would do with their questions and sources they might need to use for additional research:

Once I had approved a student’s investigation plan, he or she was ready to move on to additional research and then writing the paper.  It was essential students had three solid questions in the plan (which came from the 10 questions they generated) so that they had a new focal point for additional and more strategic research about their topics.

Reflections On These Parts of Our Research Unit of Study

In hindsight, I wish that I could have introduced the unit earlier in the year when there was more time, but I also knew students needed some intensive work with informational and argumentative writing skills without having the additional layers of research skills on top of the writing instruction that they needed.   Though I wish the timing and pacing of these pieces of the unit could have been a little different, I am glad students were able to experience these parts of research and investigation because it was clear very few in grades 7 or 8 had these kinds of learning experiences where the topic selection, presearch, and generation of research questions were emphasized and heavily frontloaded.

In the future, I would like to find  ways to connect my students with real world professionals who use these research skills as part of their daily work in their careers to help students see these research skill processes in action “in the wild”.  I think information literacy in the “real world” is something that gets very little attention from teachers or librarians.  Looking ahead to next year, I would like to find ways to connect research skills to genuine and authentic workplace experiences for my students.

Many students had limited or no experience with the scholarly resources in GALILEO, so I am glad students had this time to explore and use GALILEO resources because they’ll be expected to use them in high school and college; many shared they liked the resources they used within GALILEO plus they enjoyed learning search tips for Google. Though they didn’t seem too energized by the CRAAP Test Rumble, they clearly were using the CRAAP Test during presearch and that tool showed up in their thinking and source selection as we moved further into more focused research later in the unit.

I also realized how intense these weeks were because I have virtually no photos of students working after we did the CRAAP Test Rumble because I was so busy conferencing non-stop on a daily basis with so many students as they engaged in presearch, generated questions with the question lens activity, and then finalized a working investigation plan for their research paper.   I feel a great sense of regret and sadness now that I realize I have virtually no photos of the students working in this unit.

In closing, these experiences challenged students to think critically about different aspects of research and information.  Nearly every student, including those who may have come up a little short with their deadlines or quality/quantity of work, showed some measure of growth in these skills, and that was the ultimate goal.

Coming Up:  Part 2

In my next post, I’ll write about how I introduced EasyBib into our research work for crafting our bibliographies and taking digital notes.  I’ll also share with you how I personalized the writing instruction for the paper to be available “upon demand” as students completed different research and learning tasks.

Resilience: The Most Undervalued Information Literacy Disposition

Disclaimer added 5/17/17:  Due to erroneous information being circulated by certain academic librarians, I would like to clarify this post was written with appropriate permissions.  If you have concerns, I would appreciate your being professional and contacting me directly.

Update 5/18/17:  Due to misinformation that has been spread maliciously by at least once academic librarian through social media about this post, I have edited the original for clarity to keep the focus on the original theme of the post, resilience as an essential information literacy disposition.  It is unfortunate that some academic librarians who perceive themselves as the FERPA police and who know nothing of K12 education posted erroneous information about this post through their social media channels before bothering to contact me about the post, behavior that is unprofessional and most decidedly not in the spirit of the kind of librarianship I would hope colleagues would aspire to emulate.  When they did contact me, they did so in a manner I would not consider appropriate on many levels.  Here is the slightly revised post, and I hope you will glean food for thought whether you are a classroom teacher or librarian at any level.

When we think of information literacy, certain skills usually get great emphasis: understanding how to evaluate information and the sources of that information, search strategies, and citation management.  While these are all important skills, it seems that some dispositions get overlooked because they are soft skills that are not easily taught in neat tidy ways, nor can they be taught in a short time frame.  They are not considered “hard” skills that might be formally or quantitatively assessed with a test or performance task in some way.

I’ll be writing soon about my mini inquiry and research unit with 7th and 8th grade writers. However, there was a moment today I think is worth sharing and speaks to the importance of the soft skills and dispositions.  Ryland is one of my 7th grader writers who has gone from hating the class at the beginning of the year  to one who has flourished and thrived even with some setbacks as we took on more challenging academic writing during the second semester.  He has persisted in the face of assorted challenges.  He even signed up for my Creative Writing SOAR this semester (on top of having the regular writing class with me every day). Of notable importance, Ryland has discovered a love for writing poetry and shared that love of writing poetry with others.

As part of our project work, students brainstormed topics, narrowed down topics, and then engaged in presearch to confirm or change a final topic of interest.  After we completed presearch, students generated 10 different research questions using our question lenses method (more on this soon in a blog post, I promise).  From the 10 questions, I asked students to select their three choices with the understanding we would only focus on two but keep the third on standby in case they discovered one of the top two was not a viable choice as they continued with additional research. Like many other students during the presearch phase, Ryland needed some extra support with his search strategies and efforts, but he dug into the resources I helped him access.

In Ryland’s original research contract, he identified two top question choices around his interest in the Chattahoochee River.  He struggled to compose his 10 questions and to select his top two choices, which originally included:

• How did the people use the river a long time ago?
• How long is the Chattahoochee River?

Of course, the second question is not one that really lends itself to inquiry.  However, I wanted Ryland to be able to figure this out for himself.  After being introduced to EasyBib for crafting bibliographies and taking digital notes, he continued his search.  He fell behind for various reasons with his notes, and did not meet his deadline for getting 10 notes (a suggested 5 per research question); I gave him an extension, and he continued working on notes.  Yesterday, he began drafting his introduction to his research essay.  As we conferenced over his draft, we talked about how he had a terrific hook but that the thesis was falling flat.  Through this writing conference, Ryland realized that the second question was one that was more factual and not truly researchable in a deeper way.   I asked him if he would consider going back into his sources and review some the ideas he had read, including an article I had shared with him about the water wars involving the river between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.  Though he looked a little discouraged, he said he would try.

Today he returned to class in an upbeat manner.  He cheerfully and excitedly took out his research contract and told me that after doing some thinking last night, he had a new research question:

How did the water wars get started in the first place?

Not only did Ryland show resilience in developing a new research question (and a damn good one at that!), but he did so in a calm and thoughtful way.  Even more impressed is that Ryland demonstrated this quality at a time of year when many students think school is over with only a week to go!  While this academic move may not sound like a big deal to us as adults, problem-solving and persistence are a big deal for a 7th grader, especially for one who has little experience doing research projects.  Of course, I praised him!  He then set about taking some additional notes and then writing his thesis statement for his introduction now that he had two major research questions/points that worked.   If we look at AASL’s Standards for 21st Century Learners, we can see Ryland demonstrated these dispositions under Standard 1:  Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge:

•  1.2.5 Demonstrate adaptability by changing the inquiry focus, questions, resources, or strategies when necessary to achieve success.
• 1.2.6 Display emotional resilience by persisting in information searching despite challenges.
• 1.2.7 Display persistence by continuing to pursue information to gain a broad perspective.

He also demonstrated these self-assessment strategies:

• 1.4.2 Use interaction with and feedback from teachers and peers to guide own inquiry process.
• 1.4.3 Monitor gathered information, and assess for gaps or weaknesses.
• 1.4.4 Seek appropriate help when it is needed.

I find that frustration, especially when faced with challenging or unfamiliar learning tasks, is a major obstacle for teen learners.  Many students have low thresholds for frustration and give up easily for different reasons.   The majority of the students I teach, all of whom were identified as struggling writers last summer and placed into my Writing Connections courses for this academic year, especially grappled with a low threshold for frustration early in the year last fall.   As I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to teaching writing through a workshop/studio approach this school year, I have found that being able to frequently conference with students 1:1 and coach them through these rough patches goes a long way in building confidence and students’ belief that they CAN overcome new or difficult learning challenges.  These opportunities to regularly conference with students about their writing is a integral and critical part of helping them develop resistance in the face of a demanding or exacting learning situation.

Giving students opportunities to struggle through something hard, that requires thought,  and even asks for multiple efforts, is essential to helping students learn how to problem-solve and build resilience.  At the same time, we as teachers monitor them through the struggle; we know when to step in and when to step back.  We can be there for them and scaffold their efforts by serving as a sounding board they think/talk aloud a challenge/problem,  provide the “just in time” question to prompt or shift their thinking, and celebrate all their steps along the way as they learn from missteps and then ultimately achieve success.

As a librarian, resilience, adaptability, and persistence are essential dimensions of information literacy that I honestly could not cultivate very deeply or frequently with students in the media center in any scalable kind of way.  Why?  Because I lacked that regular interaction with students as well as the deep trust and relationship building that come from working with a student every day of the school year as a classroom teacher.   As a classroom teacher, I have the learning environment and access to students to help develop these dispositions of information literacy.  I’m situated in the heart of our writing and learning studio as we model, practice, share, and revise our thinking and our writing.  As I’ve said in the past, information literacy is not the work of only the librarian, but it is the work of the entire faculty who can work as a schoolwide team with the help of the school librarian to infuse information literacy skills on a meaningful and significant scale with regularity that will have genuine impact on student learning.

Ryland showed a major growth spurt today and has come from far from the writer and learner he was in August. Will this show up in our school’s growth bubble or as part of his test scores on the Georgia Milestones?  Most likely  no, but it will be an important part of his growth as a student and an individual that will go with him far beyond K12 education and hopefully help him as he encounters life challenges beyond graduation.  It is a joy and honor to be part of my students’ journey as learners and to play a role in helping young people like Ryland develop these fundamental dispositions.

The Culture of Inquiry-Driven Learning in Art Classes: Inspiring the Possibilities for Research and Composing Literacy Practices

Last fall  I had the pleasure of spending a good bit of time with Dorsey Sammataro’s art classes during the first nine weeks of the semester.  One of the things that struck me about her classes was the inquiry-driven approach that felt like a real-world workshop because there is shared ownership of learning by the students.   In late October, I was really thinking about how her approach to teaching and learning reflected the ideals of inquiry-driven learning and how could her art classes inspire how we approach research projects.

While I’ve been busy with other projects, assignments/initiatives, and working with other academic classes, Dorsey and I have continued to muse and think together.   Earlier this month,  I had the chance to observe Dorsey’s 1st period students, and this experience crystallized the possibilities of learning I want to see happening as part of our instructional program.  At the same time, it really brought to the surface a lot of the frustrations I have felt in recent years as I’ve tried to elevate my work and role as an instructional designer.   If you’ve taught in a high school, you know that these learning environments are often the most difficult to frame from an inquiry stance on learning and literacy.

I thought it would be helpful to share the aspects of the learner experience I’ve seen in Dorsey’s classes since starting here last August.  Dorsey provides learning structures, but students ultimately make choices.  Some elements I’ve observed include:

• Students set learning goals—short terms and long term.
• Students engage in multiple “drafts” and passes at art work.
• Student have freedom to “fail” because failure is viewed as positive and part of the learning experience that values experimenting and mistakes.
• Students keep idea books/sketchbooks that they share and serve as a place to pen ideas for immediate use or to revisit at a later time.
• Students do regular peer review and discussion of their works; collaboration is encouraged and an integral part of daily life in these classes.
• Students engage in frequent reflection and self-assessment.
• Formative assessment is integral in these classes as is time to actually engage in the craft of creating art.
• There is always something to learn from completed projects even if they did not turn out the way students planned or if they are not completely successful in the eyes of the student.

As I have been drafting this post, I was taken back to the roots of my interest in an inquiry stance in learning:  READ 8100 (Inquiry Based Literacy) with Dr. Bob Fecho at the University of Georgia.  I could write an entire post about this life-changing course, but instead, I’ll point you to some reflections I composed (2002!) in response to a reading on Paulo Freire. Here are some of the qualities of a learning space that takes an inquiry stance on learning (this list was compiled by my classmate Sharon Murphy Augustine, and I incorporated them into my response):

• DIS-ease. There are many questions raised without answers
• Establishes more than the teacher as validator of knowledge/work
• Feeling of responsibility to yourself and the class
• Recognizes classroom as a complicated, non-laboratory place filled with complex, caring human beings
• Fights culture of school that wants THE right answer
• Doesn’t hide what is occurring in class and makes class part of determining what is occurring.
• Patience- doesn’t give up too quickly and realizes community/learning/inquiry doesn’t happen overnight.

Unlike the banking concept of education,  Freire says,  “For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”(72).

Of course, these qualities dovetail with those of participatory learning spaces, something I’ve written and spoken about extensively over the last few years.   You can search my blog if you are interested in reading more, check out my pieces in print, or view my presentations.

One of the regular learning structures of Dorsey’s class is peer critique—students have an opportunity to share a completed piece of work and share the successes as well as the struggles.  It’s a fantastic reflective experience for the student sharing as well as the peers providing feedback.

Here is a sample set of reflection questions that Dorsey uses when students are ready to share out individual projects with the larger class:

Students write or type a narrative based on these questions to help them think about the verbal/oral discussion with the group.  Over a series of a couple of days, each student has an opportunity to share these reflections with the group, and classmates then provide on the spot feedback.  It’s a relaxed conversation, and I’m always struck by how articulate, candid, and invested students are in their work and assessment of their work.

So what does the exemplary work of an art teacher have to do with me as a school librarian?

What I see in Dorsey’s art classes invites us to rethink how we see literacy practices like research projects and writing assignments.  What if more teachers approached research and writing the way Dorsey’s artists approach their work?  What if students had more say in topic selections?  What if the processes of topic selection, developing questions, investigating, wrestling with information, drafting, and composing final products (whether a paper or alternative forms of expressions/composing/creating) were valued as much as the end product (usually a traditional paper)?  What if formative assessments were integrated and valued as much as the summative assessment?  I think we would see deeper learning, higher quality of work, authenticity, and more excitement because students would be taking responsibility for their learning rather than the experience being completely teacher driven.   It’s hard to be emotionally invested in something when you have little to no input or voice.

I’ve been lucky to experience this sustained, inquiry-driven approach with different teachers in recent years, but these experiences are often the exception, not the norm.   I become giddy when I get to help co-design learning experiences where we can go deep and kids are not rushed through some of the most important life skills they will acquire and take with them wherever they go.  I relish these opportunities to do deep dives and give students choice and ownership of their learning as well as meaningful learning structures to scaffold that decision making.  I worry about the consequences of these kinds of literacy practices are increasingly commonplace and  limit kids to certain kinds of assignments that are often couched in “college and career” readiness rather than a broader mindset of life readiness where literacy practices are evolving as people move through different careers and personal experiences.  Many of you teachers, librarians, and students are weary of research assignments that feel formulaic and artificial.    I have always aspired to be someone who helps grow a learning environment of inquiry and curiosity and meaning making like Dorsey does in her classrooms.  As a teacher and librarian, I worry about the practices I’ve seen in recent years with research assignments and how it seems increasingly marginalized at the high school level.

Maybe it’s my life and professional experiences of recent years, maybe it’s part of being this far in my career with only a few years left to go, or maybe it’s the culmination of these factors and more, but whatever the case, I feel a sense of urgency to be a catalyst and team in player in a larger learning environment that dares to re-imagine not only research and literacy practices in academic areas, but also the public school learning experience from an inquiry, participatory lens.   The art studio experiences that Dorsey and her students live and breathe serve as inspiration for how we might rethink the dominant research and composing practices and framework.  I am looking forward to continued collaboration with Dorsey, art teacher Donna Jones, and their students as we all learn from each other.

Sticky Notes for Assessing Student Learning Needs and the Bigger Picture of Information Literacy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a simple yet rich activity I did with tenth grade students as the kickoff to a “one-shot” mini-lesson; this activity was helpful in getting specific feedback on what was particularly challenging for these students with research.  Last week, I spent two days with English teacher Meg Batchelor’s sophomores and decided to do a similar activity.  This time, though, the two focal questions were:

1.  What is most challenging for you when doing research papers or projects?
2.  What are you “go to” sources when doing research?

I thought it would be fun to have students share their responses anonymously using sticky notes and then capture their responses in three ways:

1.  photographing the responses
2.  capturing the responses with the Post-It App
3.  identifying all the responses and corresponding number of responses for each response

Students jotted their thoughts on the sticky notes and then placed them on the appropriately labeled “parking lots” (a bigger jumbo sticky note–so very meta!) on the wall.

Take a look at the tallied responses below:

I found both data sets fascinating and saw some overlap with the responses from the previous group (valid/credible/reliable surfaces bubbled up again as well as sources with information relevant to the research topic or question), but as you can see, there are some nuanced differences, too.   We can also clearly see that the students rely heavily on Google and Wikipedia; at first glance, the responses don’t seem to reflect much prior knowledge or experience in using other sources such as the school and district owned databases from Gale or specific EBSCO databases provided at the state level through GALILEO.   More research would be needed to peel back the layers of the stories behind the data and to better understand what might account for these responses, especially for me as a newcomer who has been here only since August.  It would also be interesting to see do a large scale open-ended survey by grade level and compare results.

If we group student responses to identified challenges of research into the three categories of learner experience and six stages of information seeking using Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process model; we can see the majority of these responses would be related to cognitive tasks.  However, we can also see evidence of what Kuhlthau identifies as the principle of uncertainty  reflected in the student responses.   This is an imperfect first pass at coding and categorizing the student responses—I could see how some of their responses could fall into multiple areas of experience (both affective and cognitive) as well as overlap in information seeking stages since students often move and back forth between uncertainty and clarity as they continually explore, formulate, and collect (see this great blog post on this interpretation by my colleagues at the Letting Go blog that is all about ISP).  You can click on the image below for a larger view.

We could also categorize responses more broadly into these areas of challenge:

However you look at it, these kinds of data sets provide conversation points to evaluate and assess student information literacy skills in the context of current research practices by each subject area in our school.  I see this data as a set of conversation points to help us look more closely at current practices with research assignments in the context of:

• alignment to the state standards—where are we hitting the sweet spots, where are the gaps, where are engaging in overkill?
• the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (most high school teachers don’t know about this set of information literacy learning outcomes; thank you University of West Georgia academic librarian and Information Literacy Coordinator Andrea Stanfield for pointing me to this LibGuide on the standards–I love how they organized the content.)
• engaging in some soul-searching and really thinking about what we believe about research—what do we need to keep doing, what should we let go, and what do we need to begin doing (see this great example).

Having the courage to interrogate what you believe about research practices is not always easy, but I think it is essential if we are to take an inquiry stance on many kinds of literacy practices.

On a side note, several of you from Twitter asked me to share the technical aspect of this activity with the Post-It App.  Overall, it worked fairly well, but the image captures were limited in size, and responses recorded in pencil didn’t pick up very well or at all.  You can see the less than ideal quality of the images here.   If I use this app again as part of data collection, I will make sure students write on the post-its in pen; I also am curious to see if the app functions in a more robust manner on an iPad versus an iPhone.

In closing, I am deeply appreciative to Ms. Batchelor and her two sections of 10th Literature/Composition for their candid responses and the opportunity to talk about some of the challenges as well as an opportunity to introduce resources through our project LibGuide to help address some of those concerns.  Their feedback and these conversations are wonderful opportunities for me to learn from the students and to continually revisit what I think know and how I am interpreting student learning.