Information Literacy and Student Achievement
Loertscher, David V. and Douglas Achterman. Increasing Academic Achievement Through the Library Media Center: A Guide for Teachers. Salt Lake City: Hi Willow Research and Publishing, 2002.
David Loertscher is an prolific champion for creating effective information literacy programs in school libraries and in this book he partners with Douglas Achterman to sound the call again, this time with the intent of providing classroom teachers with an introduction to the benefits of utilizing the school library media center (Loertscher has also written a similar book but intended as a guide for principals and superintendents). Loertscher and Achterman have divided their book into five main sections: teacher/library media specialist collaboration, building avid and capable readers, enhancing learning through technology, creating an information literate learner, and building an information structure.
Each of these sections provides rationales, resources, and examples for teachers to ponder and appropriate for their own use. This book provides a building block for understanding how to ban the bird units and build better bird units—an idea that is explicated in Loertscher’s more recent work Ban those Bird Units! 15 Models for Teaching and Learning in Information-Rich and Technology-Rich Environments (2005).
Marzano, Robert J. Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2004.
Robert Marzano emphasizes the need to relegate more time to building background knowledge as a part of the learning process. He opines that this will aid all students’ learning, particularly in classrooms with multitudinous diversity in cultural and language backgrounds.
His book elucidates the process by which background knowledge may be successfully built by delineating two main approaches–sustained silent reading and instruction in subject specific vocabulary terms. The book includes a five-step process for effective sustained silent reading and a six-step process for effective instruction in subject specific vocabulary terms as well as a list of the baseline vocabulary critical for students’ success in the sundry disciplines.
Marzano, Robert J., Debra J. Pickering and Jane E. Pollock. Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004.
Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock team to create this work devoted to increasing student achievement. Their work elucidates the sundry factors that affect student achievement. They explicate nine categories of research-supported instructional strategies—Identifying Similarities and Differences, Summarizing and Note Taking; Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition, Homework and Practice, Nonlinguistic Representations, Cooperative Learning, Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback, Generating and Testing Hypotheses, and Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. By discussing each one of these effective instructional strategies in detail and by providing support for understanding and implementing them in classroom instruction, the authors have created a valuable reference for educators.
Information Literacy and Learning Theory and Practice
Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking eds. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning and Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000.
How People Learn provides an adequate overview of the research that has been done in cognitive development while simultaneously expostulating regarding future research needs in order to further understand learning to enhance students’ achievement. The book strives to transform abstract theories into classroom actions. The chapters entitled “Learning and Transfer”, “Technology to Support Learning”, and “Next Steps for Research” are particularly helpful from the aspect of integrating information literacy development throughout the curriculum. A short version of this text is available online for school educators and anyone interested in discovering How People Learn.
Heide, Anne and Dale Henderson. Active Learning in the Digital Age Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003.
Anne Heide and Dale Henderson seek to provide educators with an education on how to successfully implement information and communication technology (ICT) in their classrooms. The book serves as a useful introduction to active learning with ideas about classroom setup, assessment, and the teacher’s role. The emphasis of the book is on utilizing ICT to create a learning environment that is student centered.
McKenzie, Jamie. Learning to Question to Wonder to Learn. Bellingham, WA: FNO Press, 2005.
At the end of chapter one of Learning to Question to Wonder to Learn, Jamie McKenzie posits, “Questioning is to learning as yeast is to bread making. Unleavened bread is hard, flat, and . Unleavened thinking is uninspired”. With this in mind, McKenzie writes a book about learning to engender inspired thinking via asking well-constructed, provocative questions. He discusses many types of questions such as irrelevant questions, hypothetical questions, probing questions, etc. as well as proffering a questioning toolkit. This book is a useful supplement to educators who want to go beyond the many gratis resources pertaining to questioning that are available on his website Questioning.org. Teachers may also find useful McKenzie’s earlier work Beyond Technology: Questioning, Research, and the Information Literate School (Linworth Press 2000).
McKenzie, Walter. Multiple Intelligences and Instructional Technology 2nd ed (spiral bound). Eugene, OR: The Society, 2005.
A product of the ISTE, Walter McKenzie’s book demonstrates the complementary relationship between multiple intelligences and instructional technology. This invaluable resource includes lesson plan ideas that support differentiated teaching. McKenzie begins by discussing the theory behind multiple intelligences; he asserts multiple intelligences unequivocally should influence instructional design and states technology affords a facile means of designing to multiple intelligences. He proceeds to delineate the ways in which technology buttresses educators’ ability to teach to multiple intelligences and increases the chances of reaching every student. Most practically, he discusses media and software selection, how to modify existing lessons and create new lessons, and how assessment can be performed based on these new lesson plans.
Information Literacy and Technology
National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Connecting Curriculum and Technology (spiral bound). Eugene, OR: The Society, 2000.
A product of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), this resource is filled with teacher-created lesson plans that have been designed to connect disciplines to National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) student performance indicators (disciplinary and multidisciplinary resource units are included). The appendix also makes available a template for designing one’s own lessons. ISTE also provides access to Connecting Curriculum and Technology free online.
National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Preparing Teachers To Use Technology (spiral bound). Eugene, OR: The Society, 2001.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) created National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) as a guide for students and teachers in developing technological competencies. The book offers many instructional examples that can be employed to undergird the development of these competencies.
(Additionally, the ISTE produced a book in 2006 entitled National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Resources for Student Assessment. Although I was unable to peruse this book myself, their website states this book to include assessments resource for teachers using strategies based on the National Educators Technology Standards (NETS) such as assessment rubrics, case studies, and an overview of technology assessment and options. This book appears to contain valuable information, and the ISTE is a promising resource for current research and development in the integration of information literacy and technology.)
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