Big 6

1. Task Definition
1.1 Define the information problem
1.2 Identify information needed

2. Information Seeking Strategies
2.1 Determine all possible sources
2.2 Select the best sources

3. Location and Access
3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)
3.2 Find information within sources

4. Use of Information
4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch)
4.2 Extract relevant information

5. Synthesis
5.1 Organize from multiple sources
5.2 Present the information

6. Evaluation
6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)
6.2 Judge the process (efficiency)

by Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz

As you can see the Big 6 is a problem solving model, it has six easy to follow steps. If students were taught a framework to solve problems like this from a young age it would help to solve problems there whole life. As you can see I like the Big 6 a fair bit and I don't see any downsides.

To find out more out the Big 6 Click Here

Video

Videos are like podcasts but have a visual component, the visual component though will extremely help with the audio. You could present the video to your students in a classroom, give it to your students as homework, record your lessons so that the students can look over them again if they miss out on anything or the whole thing. Over all student will learn better if they are watching something, they learn more when more senses are being used.

I've unloaded a you tube video to show you how to use a video effectively

Podcasts

Podcasts are pretty much a audio recorded message. In a learning situation podcasts could be useful for students that miss out on a lecture/class therefore recording your lesson and setting it up as a podcast after for students would be extremely useful. A podcast can also be used if a teacher misses a class for some reason, he/she could give the podcast in advance for the students to listen to while he/she is away. They can also be play more than once in case a student misses something for the lesson. The only problem I can see with the podcasts is that if the person that is recording them does set it up properly, the information that they are trying to get across mightn't be recorded they way they wanted it to be recorded or not recorded in away the students will understand. Plus the podcast mightn't be recorded in a way that can be heard properly.

Click Here to visit a website with podcast

Images

Images as a learning tool can get the students thinking. They could be trying to see if the picture makes sense, in the pictures they could be trying to see if the dice could be arranged in such

away or not (maybe an art class might look it this). Instead to tell them students the instructions you could use an image to show them the instruction, thus using a different learning style. You could use a picture of a building or something similar to get engineering students thinking about what makes

up the building and what forces are keeping the building standing. An image will help the teacher engage the students and it will hold there focus. There many

different ways an image could be used to teach.

Images can also be resized in to different ways, one is the image itself you can make it bigger or

smaller by doing this you can show

different

aspects of the image. Two, you can resize the image in the file sense, making the image file bigger or smaller. By resizing the image either way your going to lose quality of the image.

Learning Management Systems

Learning management systems are being used by different educations departments such as late primary school , secondary school and university. A learning management system is a very large website to say the least. In a learning management system the student can view the information that the teacher has put up for them (like in a normal website). Plus the student is most cases given freedom to change some pages to there liking (like in a wiki). There are also forums linked to the learning management systems so the students can express concerns and ask questions. The learning management system will also have links to helpful websites. The set up of a learning management system will different a little each time it is set up but the main parts of a learning management system are, there will be tabs to different pages such as; there might be a tab for each class a student takes or for each different forum. There will also be many many links to different pages such as assessments or power points that the teacher has made.

A learning management system is useful in so many ways, they have all the information in one place for students to find. Students can ask questions when ever they need to, not when the has them in a class together, the student can go back and look at older information that the may have learnt at the start of the year. If a student misses a class the information that misses out on at class will be on the internet easily reached without have to trouble the teacher so when they come to the next class they have learnt what the other student have. There are a few down sides to the learning management systems such as, it take a lot to set up and maintain plus it is a little hard to navigate to start with. Also some students, especially in university will give up on go to class because all the information is on the internet. Overall I think that learning management systems are very good for students it helps to keep them on track with there work and if they misses out on a class or just don't remember what they learnt a couple of weeks ago they can have a look and help themselves.

Prezi

A prezi is a very interactive and uses a very flashy graphics user interface. I don't know if "Prezi" is the official name to this type of digital tool. As much I can see a prezi is a very flashy power point with little words and lots of different pictures. When a prezi's start you see all the information in one big page and when you go to the "next slide" it zooms in to a point on a page that shows your first bit of information. Depending on how you set up your prezi, it may just move the camera to the next information or it may zoom out then zoom back in to the next bit of information. A prezi is just a very flashy power point and has the same strengths of weakness when it comes to learning. The only other weakness it has is it may take more time to set up then a power point, plus the only strength that I can see is that with younger students they'll love the flashiness of the prezi.

Websites

Websites are fairly similar to Wikis but they can only be changed by the creator. Since websites can't be changed by anyone but the creator, websites are used to show things and give certain information on topics, places, businesses and the list goes on. Most of the time websites won't be used for journals or to show a learning path like a Blog plus won't be used group work and can't be change by anyone therefore websites have heaps of facts and information. Websites are a great source of information for a learning setting but since anyone can make a website not all information can be trust worthy. Another great thing about websites is that they're easy to search for there information because of particular websites called search engines. The sites will help students search for information and this will make the information on the internet so much easier for them to use plus this skill will be very useful in the future because like every human on the planet we like to know what we're interested in.