“Collaborative teaching is awesome” you think, as you and a colleague give 25 students a carefully planned assignment that uses research skills, critical thinking, and has room for a creative spin. Oops, one problem, you have been so busy with challenging your students that you have forgotten to give them the basics of navigating a library and evaluating the information that they discover and they turn into MONSTERS! AHHHH!
That is a dramatization of what happened to Barbera Ripp Safford one sad day and it inspired her to re-visit the basics! Her article, “How to help students handle the information overload” speaks to the importance of teaching students to be self sufficient and knowledgeable in locating resources and to be able to determine the value of the information that the locate. She states, “[m]ost important to the search process… is teaching students to critically analyze their search results and choose the best information for their particular needs." It is vital that students know how to choose the best information for their topic of research. To be effective teacher-librarians (media specialists), we must teach our students to analyze the information they find and understand that the top website, top article or first section in a non-fiction book may not be the best for their research needs.
In my school library, I spend a great deal of the month of September doing lessons with my students on how to successfully navigate all of the different areas of the library. My lessons are hands on and very successful as I do not get many “where is -----” questions after students have completed them. Safford’s article has inspired me to spend more time on teaching my students how to analyze the information that they are able to locate to determine the best information for their needs. I will now spend more time teaching my students to look at all of the information they find with a critical eye and explaining how to determine the best information for their research needs.
Safford, Barbara Ripp. "How to help students handle the information overload." School Library Media Activities Monthly. Vol. XXIII, Oct. 2/06.
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