Double entry journal #15

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Chapter 8 Beyond Google and The "Satisficing" Searching of Digital Natives. 1. What is the purpose of this chapter? How students, who are so clearly familiar and apparently adept with Internet tools, are at times so poor at using the Internet academically. 2. What is the major finding from a review of studies that have looked at technology adoption of young people?. Does this finding seem to reflect your own use of technology? Most students are comfortable with the idea that they are avid users and adapters of new technologies. I am comfortable with using most technology but do not feel that I am completely knowledgeable in the area. 3. How do the authors define Information Literacy? The set of skills and knowledge that allows us to find, evaluate, and use the information that we need, as well as filter out the information we don't need. 4. What is the "clear message" from a review of the studies focused on college students information seeking behavior? Do these findings reflect your own information seeking behaviors? Students had difficulties conducting college level research and were challenged by the tasks of accessing appropriate research material, narrowing down their search topics to make them more manageable, and were overwhelmed by the scope and range of resources available to them. I understand this statement. Sometimes I am confused by the information that is presented to me and how to make sure it is true and accurate information. This class has went along way in helping me sort some of it out but sometimes I still feel confused. 5. What does the term "satisfcing" in the area of decision making mean? When presented with a range of options that could be pursued, a satisficing decision is one that is acceptable to the individual based on some personal criterion, but it is a decision or course of action that is known to be the best one. 6. What are the differences to deep and surface level approaches to a learning task?  The students that who adopted a deep approach to the learning task were inclined to focus on trying to comprehend the meaning behind learning material, whereas students who adopted a surface approach to the learning task tended to focus on simply reproducing what was contained within the learning material with little concern for understanding the overall meaning. 7. What should educators aim to do to improve the scripts student have for sophisticated online information seeking? The behavior and attitudes of students when it comes to scholarly information seeking is indicative of satisficing search strategies that are associated with a surface approach to learning in higher education. 8. Why is Google's page rank system problematic for information seeking? The pagerank algorithm that underpins Google's search results associates relevance with visibility ( the more pages that link to a given page the higher its ranking). 9. Are you "digitally wise" when it comes to information seeking? Give an example of how you approached an information seeking task for one of your academic courses this semester (do not include this class). I have found that I can start with a search engine and go form there. Google, or Firefox or I may even use wikipedia pages for a basis to start my research. I then use the links or web pages. Then possibly look up other webpages with the information I am seeking. I try to validate the information given/ 10. Has the popularity of the Internet and the information contained on the Web created a new problem for undergraduate students research skills? Why of Why not? I feel that it has. If a student is not sure how to filter the information given it can cause problems for that student.

Think Aloud

Todd online reading strategies from jatodd71

Value

Value: Was the page worth visiting? Does the site offer anything informative, substantial, or insightful? Is the site free of spelling and grammatical errors?

I feel this site was very informative and that the authors ideas were very insightful in that he not only answers the question in the heading he also inspires the reader to start asking some questions of their own.

the site is a magazine article so it was free of spelling and grammatical errors.

Coverage

Coverage: Is your topic being addressed? Is the information basic and cursory or detailed and scholarly? Explain the major argument being made.

I feel the topic is being address and also feel that there are other issues with this topic that now needs addressed in the way that they article reads.
I feel the information is very detailed and that he makes an accurate claim on some of the issues brought up in the article.
The major arguement being made is if we are giving these big companies tax breaks to help to create jobs then why is there still so many people out of work?

Currency

Currency: When was the information on the page originally written? Has the site been kept up-to-date?

The article was written on 5/03/2011.
There have been no updates as of 10/24/12

Objectivity

Objectivity: What is the author's point of view? Summarize the argument being presented. What is the purpose of the site?

The purpose of this site is for the Forbes magazine and their coverage of their ideas about money issues.

The authors point of view is to give some basic and possibly unknown knowledge about the tax cuts and whether or not it does create a possibility for jobs and to help the unemployment rate.

He states that even though governments does give tax cuts for those companies willing to hire it still does not create real jobs. He gives statistics about how many people are still actually looking for work and how even with the tax cuts that the big companies are still making a profit and still hiring very little personell.
 

 

Double Entry Journal # 12

Why do educators need to be careful about  terms like "Digital Native"? A majority of the students may possess a core set of technology-based skills but they are in a very diverse range of skills and skill levels that exist across the student population. There is more variance across individuals than is suggested by broad generalizations such as the “Digital Native” or the “Net Generation.”

2. What outcome occurs when young people are encourage to transform their understanding of particular topics by designing a multimodal text? Positive and enhanced outcomes have been reported.

3. You may skip the section titled "Context for the Project”

4. What was the goal of the project in terms of product? The goal was to track the development of the participants' multimodal literacies over a two-year period by comparing tow multimodal products created at the beginning and end of the period.

5. What was the goal of the project in terms of process? The goal in the terms of process was to gain a deeper understanding oh how multimodal texts were created, especially when the students were working in pairs at the computer.

6. How were the participants fro the study selected? They reviewed all students' products from years 8-10 to identify general characteristics and trends among the multimodal features. From that analysis, the selected ten students who best represented the cohorts and the multimodal products of these students provided the core product data in the study.

7.  Describe the task students engage is for the purpose of this study? They were to complete a concept map to organize information acquired from web sources and a decision making matrix to facilitate transformation of the ideas in their concept map ino a preferred solution, as required for their multimodal text. Then following these preparatory stages, the students could create a multimodal text using a word processor, a presentation tool, or a web publishing program.

8. Explain how the researchers compared the student created multimodal texts? They created a 3 x 3, tow-dimensional approach that evaluated the title slide/page, the headings, and the knowledge representation of each multimodal text in terms of design, content, and cohesion.

9. What differences in Jenny's PowerPoint presentation do you find the most interesting? I find the fact that she used more colors and different fonts in the younger years as to when she was older.

10. How is working together on a computer unlike working together using a pencil and paper?1. While typed words may appear immediately on scree, there is ofter a considerable wait time between the keying in of the instruction and a response from the computer. 2. The length of the wait time in unpredictable and may be several minutes. 3. The result the computer provides to an instruction is often unexpected, as in the selection and the ordering of items located in a web search.

11. What was interesting about student's behavior as they collaborated on a task at the computer? I found it interesting that they talked about off-task item while waiting for a result to show up on the computer but as soon as the result came available they resumed their work.

12. What can teacher learn about designing learning activities that involve the creation of multimodal texts from this study? That it is important to develop students time management skills and a sense of priorities in relation to the task at hand.


13. According the the conclusion of this study, what do student need to learn in order to successful complete a multimodal text construction? Students still need the basic same skills to complete tasks as previous generations.

14. Are you surprised by the conclusions drawn in this study? No, even though we have more information and better technology than previous generations, each student still needs the basic skills to complete their tasks and to do them appropriately.