ETL 501 - resource provision

This week kicks off our exploration of information environments. We begin by revisiting teaching and learning - and of course the constructivist approach to learning which appears to be the current dominant educational pedagogy. Key to these conversations is the notion of what is information provision and what constitutes an information resource and the role/s of a T and or TL in its provision and how this relates to information literacy skills.

One of the tasks for this week included thinking about the key types of information a new and inexperienced geography teacher would need to teach a year 7 about rainforests and a source of information for this person. I confess I was so focused on the needs of the teacher and content information needs that I neglected the students needs, because of course one of the key bits of information the teacher would need would be about the students themselves. Given the constant reminders of the need for collaboration one would have to suggest that another more experienced geography teacher with a knowledge of the school would be an excellent source of information. I was reading a report recently that compared the differences in performances of countries on standardised testing (PISA). One interesting point was that in those countries/provinces who are improving (Shanghai, South Korea, Singapore) much more time was allocated to non face-to-face teaching and collaboration, (including in some places providing 2 or 3 mentors for new teachers) than in Australia - which, incidentally, has been dropping at a faster rate than these place are improving!

But back to resources, in another activity we were provided with objectives (based on Blooms taxonomy), questions (based on unit learning needs) and a had to add the relevant resources to the final column. In this I think it's useful to add in another column to identify the appropriate tasks for the question to make resource provision clearer - it also slightly changes the focus of the resource question. For example, (objective) Evaluation (question) Is it reasonable that people pollute our waterways? Defend your answer; By adding a column for an appropriate task/tool, one can focus resources needs. Eg, an appropriate task for this outcome may be a debate, then the question would be what types of resources would students need to effectively conduct a debate, rather than simply what resources will allow the students to answer the question effectively.

In considering resources in light of student learning outcomes, it did also occur to me that the usefulness of resources are sometimes determined by teacher effectiveness and the way in which the resource is utlised - even the best resource can be ineffective if inappropriately or unimaginatively used.