Essential Questions and Research

I will always need to continue to work and develop my skills at getting students to ask better questions and use higher order thinking skills.  The essential question is about asking a deeper thinking question that constructs meaning for a researcher.  My favorite research theory/book is Guided Inquiry by Carol Kuhlthau.  Her research process focuses on how students need to connect their research to something that has meaning in their lives.  She also stresses the importance of assessing students during each stage of their research.  Using her theory, mixed with Jamie McKenzie's Research Cycle and The Big 6 (a more linear approach but still useful for organization), I developed a process for research.  However, I have struggled trying to include this approach with 4th grade.  I got about as far as the KWL chart and need to move on to finding an Essential Question.  I did have more success with an endangered animal research project with 6th grade, except I gave them their essential question, "what can you do to play a part in the future of your animal's survival?"  The other parts were the typical, "what is your animal's habitat," "provide a description of your animal," "what is their geographic range," etc.  All the students are most excited about how they can be involved in helping the future survival of something they care about.  In the future I would like to work at getting them to develop their own essential question.

The most challenging part of research is the stage of gathering, sifting and sorting information.  This is the frustration stage with any grade level because information may increase uncertainty, additional questions arise, and the focus of the research may change. 

It is also important for schools or school districts to work together to formulate a consistent research model throughout a students secondary education.

Overall, I am glad to be revisiting the topic of the research process because I often get caught up in tasks-at-hand and lose focus on why it is important that students learn and finding what sparks their interest in learning.

The Next 5000 Days

The Next 5000 Days of the Internet TED Talk video by Kevin Kelly (along with listening to a popular REM song) inspired the name of this blog.  Look how fast we got to where we are now.  Where are we headed in the next 5000 days?

What struck me the most about Kevin Kelly's "5000 Days" video was his point that we are all connected to one large machine, how large it is, how fast it developed, and how reliable it is.  Even though I knew the web was one entity I had never thought about how we are all participating into one large collective.  It does seem that we think we all have our own separate devices, yet we are all looking into the same machine. The theory that one day the power of the machine will exceed all human processing power is so interesting.

I agree with a lot of what Kelly thinks will happen in the next 5000 days.  We do embed materials into the digital world and it does seem that ultimately there will be one media platform.   Kelly says the machine will be smarter and more personalized and the price we will pay is complete transparency.  He compares it to the alphabet and writing, however they alphabet and writing never required that I share my information with the world.  Yes, it is like an organism or volvox, but it is not alive... yet?  The reliance on this one machine worries me.  You would guess I am concerned by the last 3 books that I recently added to my wishlist: 

I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy by Lori B. Andrews 

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser and

 The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) by Siva Vaidhyanathan.

As for the future for my students I wonder if they really do have a choice about whether they contribute to social media.  Kevin Kelly says no.  What are their rights to privacy?  Will social media be the only way to communicate?  It is true that kids do not use email, they use text, Facebook, and Twitter.

Finally, will they have to rely on the machine for all their work? Probably.  If so, they still need to be information literate and I feel it is our responsibility to protect their right to intellectual freedom and to privacy of their identity.