Keeping it relevant
Submitted by candicewatkins on Thu, 2007-02-15 06:34.
The more time that I spend as a librarian at a small, rural community college, the more I understand the abilities and knowledge of the users at my library. For example, I taught a class the other day where a third of the class did not even know what a "browser" was -- and these were 17 & 18 year olds -- and didn't really seem to care! I was not prepared for that. So, my goal in implementing some type of social software at my library is to keep it simple and relevant to my users' needs. I'm sure that's what everybody wants to do. I think that I'll have to try something specifically integrated with students' classes. I'm leaning towards using a blog as the template for a class research guide. I'm not sure which blogging software that I'll use yet. I'll need to do some experimenting first.
»
- candicewatkins's blog
- Login to post comments
Is terminology
Is terminology important?
Just yesterday, in the high school, I was working on revamping the test students take to become licensed to use the internet in our school. The questions from the old test were either about terminology (like browser) or about the rules in place. Even though the kids weren't sure what a browser was, they could tell you the benefits of each one and they are regular users. My question yesterday was how important is terminology? Is it so important that licensing should hinge on those words? In our school, there is also the question of where they learn their internet skills. I'm not sure that there is any formal instruction...and I bet that's consistent with your users as well.
Holly Ristau
I think a discussion about
I think a discussion about terminology is an important one. People use browsers without knowing what they are. Users search databases without understanding all of the formats indexed in them.
I argue a lot that the students at MPOW of do not know what a database is and explaining it to them as an index holds no meaning for them. They do not know what an index is because they have never seen a paper index before. I usually tell them that it is like an index in the back of a book, which most of them are familiar with, but that it is expanded and covers all the articles in a database so they can be searched.
Especially in a society where technology is so ubiquitous, we need to be careful that what we are saying to our users and students is couched in diction they can understand.
Dell Bayer, TechLibrary,
Dell Bayer, TechLibrary, Sandia National Labs jabayer@sandia.gov
As a former HS teacher, I agree that terminology is important when teaching students information literacy. Think of other classes these students take. They must learn the basic vocabulary of any subject before being able to understand the more advanced lessons. In English class one must learn the specialized vocabulary to be able to recognize and distinguish fact and fiction, formal and informal writing, genres of writing, how to use verb tenses correctly, and a myriad of other concepts. The same applies in science, math, history, even vocational classes. They are taught basic definitions of common terms so all can be on the same page during discussions. Even our 5 Weeks class started with our getting to know basic tools and definitions. It's important to provide students with the specialized vocabularies of the internet and of information seeking activities.