Week #4 - Technical Difficulties

A week of computer problems is just no fun at all. In an attempt to address some of the issues we had last week with students changing desktop icons, on Tuesday the IT staff tried to lock down a few more things on the HS computers. A little overkill later and the students couldn't even save their work. We thought up a temporary workaround with flash drives, so after spending a few periods doing the flash drive shuffle, they finally decided to undo what they had done. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy a thing to undo, and had to be done individually, on every computer. Sometimes, even then, it didn't work. Long story short, we spent the rest of the week wrestling with the computers and the network, none of which wanted to work as well as they had before. I think we underestimate how much we need computers. When all the computers are acting up, the internet becomes less accessible and it's harder for students to complete their work. That makes students and teachers both frustrated. So they come to the library thinking our computers should work better...even though they don't. That makes us frustrated. Big ol' ball of frustration.

During this delightful frustration, I gave another round of freshman some instruction on research techniques. My presentation was better organized this time, and I was getting to them before they'd even started so I had more time and more reason to reinforce copyright issues and citations (1.3.1, 1.3.3). I also made a point of reviewing with them, briefly, the need to evaluate their sources, especially when pulling information off of the internet (1.1.5). I found some pretty amusing bogus websites to use as examples, and taught them the RADCAB method of website evaluation. RADCAB was designed by an elementary teacher, so it's possible that it's more appropriate for younger students, but in the limited time I had it was a short, easily remembered mnemonic so I stuck to it. Most of them had topics picked out already, but they started their research inquiries in pretty solid ways so I was pleased with the results. Of course, most of them spent the rest of the period wrestling with computer issues, but they were trying.

Their research topics were extremely diverse, and left us with some interesting conundrums for finding good sources. How many solid sources are out there for Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream? Well, Biography Reference Bank has a page on them together. I helped a student find some information from the company website, in flash presentations, so we had to cite it correctly, but she was getting information from sources other than just text (1.1.6). I had a similar experience with another student researching the Titanic. You'd think that there would be plentiful information on the Titanic, but World Book was surprisingly weak. Just goes to show, databases are great and usually worth their salt, but you can't depend on them for everything.

I also spent a significant amount of time updating a web portal on the Renaissance time period for yet another round of freshman research projects. I'll be giving them a similar lesson on research practices. We pulled a lot of print resources for them as well, and I snuck in some fiction titles that I hope to entice a few of them with, maybe I can broaden their horizons a little (4.1.1, 4.1.4).

Here's hoping the computer/.network issues are long gone on Monday.