Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

My student, Martin, who is also busy helping me get podcasts (coming soon!) ready for our Virtual Library, wrote to share some stuff he thought I’d enjoy over the break.

On its About page, Uncyclopedia calls itself:

“an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies. You might say it puts the “psych!” in “encyclopedia”. It’s sort of like Congress or Parliament, but unlike Congress or Parliament, we do have a sense of humor. Nonetheless, this is one of the only factual pages, before everything turns into a puddle of utter confusion and disarray.”

Martin’s description:

“This is a parody of Wikipedia where none of the information, where there is
any, is correct in iny way, shape or form. It’s quite funny in large places. A sample: Where the Wikipedia logo would be, there is a parody of it; a hollow potato named Sophie. Thought you would like something funny.”

I am thinking about how we might use this with learners. Perhaps publishing some creative parody writing?

Martin also shared a Flickr game, Fastr. The game generates a group of ten Flickr images. Your challenge is to guess the common tag. I wonder if we might use this to introduce the concept of tagging as a searching tool. (Warning, some images may not play well for third graders.)

One of my students, Dani, surprised me with this cookie portrait today. That’s me with the curly hair on the screen.

Everything about this day was sweet. For the first time in a couple of weeks, our students were singing and laughing. It seemed, to those of us who talked about it, that they did not take their joy for granted. It was tangible, palpable, evident.  Presents were more abundant.  Hugs were stronger. Visitors visited longer.

In fact, folks enjoyed each other so much that no one (not even our least enthusiastic learners) ran out the doors as they would to begin any normal holiday break.

Most of us were teary from time to time, but we were smiling again.

To all my dear friends and colleagues, please accept this fond virtual hug and my very best wishes for a peaceful holiday.

I was flattered to be asked to share ideas relating to evaluation in the 2.0 landscape with IMSA’s 21st Century Information Fluency Project for their very cool Full Circle Resource Kit.  The kit offers some very handy resources to use with learners.
Frances Jacobson Harris shares a podcast on issues relating to teaching credibility assessment: http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/features/v1n4/harris_coverpage.html

New Jersey high school library, Janice Cooper presents an essay on the Personal Side of Searching.

My own podcast on 2.0 evaluation issues is located here: http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/features/v1n5/valenza_coverpage.html
The project team made my stuff on blog assessment look much better : http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/valenza1.5_blogeval.html and created a rubric and lesson ideas around the criteria I’ve been thinking about: http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/blog_evaluation_assessment_v1n5.html

As you look at the rubric and the lesson, consider Francey’s points relating to how students learn to (or failed to learn to) internalize once they don’t have neat boxes and scaffolds in front of them and how evaluation issues shift in the face of varying information needs. I absolutely agree with Francey about avoiding the use of spoof sites in instruction with older students. Authentic information is far fuzzier and far more important to play with.