The "Search" for Knowledge

Reference Resources

I decided reflecting on resources required a good quote.  Since I have honed my searching skills over the past several weeks, I decided I was up to the task of searching for an appropriate quote to sum up my thoughts on reference.  What key word to use?  How about knowledge?  Several good quotes came up, but now what tone do I want to take?  How about deeply intellectual?

As we acquire knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.—Albert Schweitzer

            Or

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.--Confucius

No, too serious.  How about something more “librarian-like”.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.—Ambrose Bierce

Well, that has the tone of a media specialist with the arranging and classifying, but still not quite right.  How about something a little bit lighter?

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.—Ralph W. Sockman

That quote is getting closer.  But let’s infuse a bit of humour.

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge.  Others only gargle.—Woody Allen

I like that one, but I finally found the one that sums up my true experience with seeking knowledge about references and searching.

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.  We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.—Donald Rumsfeld

Now that quote pretty much sums up how I feel.  I thought I was muddling through my life pretty well, able to find the information I sought.  I think I have the heart of a pretty good detective.  I can usually get on the scent of something and am willing to dig deeper and deeper; pick up the thread of a clue and follow where it leads.  My experience with employing advanced searching techniques was eye-opening.  I had some knowledge of Boolean searches and certainly used the obvious techniques supplied through certain search engines.  For example, the MSU library provides very specific searches from the very first menu.  You can select books or articles.  Once you have selected articles, you can specify peer-reviewed, full-text, and even specific years.  You can search by title, author, subject or keywords. 

Through our reading, we identified certain specific ways to use (+) or (-).  We discovered we can search with allintitle: or inurl:.  We can also narrow searches to specific types of sites, for instance only .gov or .edu.  Of course the various search engines have their own peculiarities.  We also discovered that all search engines are not created equal.

We examined the different types of search engines:  hierachical, page indexers, natural language, and meta.  We also had the opportunity to share our experiences with kid-friendly searching.  With all the new knowledge I garnered about search engines, I felt fully empowered and excited to embark on a great quest, but what to search for?

My computer skills class had an assignment to write a research paper about a famous person.  The topic was broad to allow for student interest to guide the decision process.  Plus, the assessment was geared to proper format rather than proper English, so the students should be excited.  Of course, one female student in particular could not come up with a famous person.  Let’s search/google (aren’t the terms synonomous for kids) for famous women.  We had 5,100,000 hits.  Now we will take out –athletes and –scientists. Now we are down to only 1,020,000.  But wait, most of the top sites looked like they were about athletes.  I will admit it took me two tries to figure out that I had to leave a space before the (-) or the search engine thought that I was looking for that specific, not asking to take all those references away.   Now we have 186,000,000.  More than before, how did that happen?  Okay, let’s change to Most famous American woman.  How did we get 250,000,000 hits for one specific request?  The top result was for Horace Mann Middle School.  Now let’s try only .gov sites=232,000,000 results.  We have not given up yet.  Let’s get more specific in a different way.  How about “famous woman inventor”.  Now we have 22,700 hits.  We added “famous American woman inventor”, -0- hits.  How can that be?  There has to be a famous American woman inventor.  Let’s try it without the quotes, now we have 385,000.  A brief scan through the results seemed to be predominantly about African American women, so let’s try –African American.  Now we are down to 286,000.  Let’s remove the Native Americans, too.  Down to 226,000 hits.  We are getting there.  Let’s try “modern”.  Okay, 177,000 possibilities.  At this point the 5^th site let us to Mary Phelps Jacob, the inventor of the modern brassiere as well as a publisher.  After an examination of the site, we switched the search to Mary Phelps Jacob.  Now we are back up to 356,000 hits.  Noticed the top site listed her as a publisher, let’s take away publisher.  We are down to 310,000.  How about inurl:=27,000, now :gov:url=3240.  At this point, we realized the 6^th site was “How Google Works”.  Was Google trying to tell me something?  Even Google was getting frustrated with my endless searching!

The two insights I gained from my experiences over the last few weeks has been that there are many more ways to search that I was unaware of.  These techniques do require practice and patience though, just like most other worthwhile endeavors.  Just like any other skill, practice makes perfect.  I also realized that when I search for myself, I must continually adjust my searches as I evaluate the sites I retrieve.  I have not usually seemed to reach a level of frustration when I have a clear idea of the information I seek.  The problems I encountered in this exercise stemmed more from my lack of clear direction.  I have a much better perspective of the necessity to have a good reference interview when a student needs help.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Constructed-Response Exam Items

            Constructed-response exam questions, such as essays and completion items, have many advantages over fixed-response items.  Some of these advantages of completion items (fill in the blank) include their ease of construction, reliability, and increase in generalizability.  The disadvantages or limitations include that they really can only measure recall of information and yet they also are more susceptible to confusion in scoring than true/false or multiple choice tests.  When designing good completion item test questions some qualities to keep in mind include:

1.     Make sure your item measures the targeted skill.

2.     Keep the reading level below the students’ ability.

3.     There should only be one correct answer.

4.     Make sure not to take a question directly from the book, phrased in the same manner, to avoid just measuring memorization instead of comprehension and being careful the question does not lose its meaning.

5.     Include the unit of measurement if the answer requires a numerical response.

6.     Use a key word for the answer to the “blank”.

7.     Keep the answer “blank” toward the end of the question to keep the reader from being confused and having to reread and possibly lose meaning.

8.     Limit the number of blanks in the question.

As for essay questions, the advantages include their ability to measure the objective more directly, allow examination of the test taker’s writing ability, and allows for the student to explain their logic or reasoning.  The disadvantages of essays lie in the difficulty of creating good essay questions, not as much sampling of the content can occur, more difficult to score, and the scoring itself is not as reliable.  Some important qualities of good essay questions include:

1.     Item must measure targeted skill.

2.     Keep the reading level below the students’ ability.

3.     Answers should be able to be completed in less than 10 minutes.

4.     Scoring should be consistent no matter who scores it.

5.     The scoring plan describes a correct and complete response.

6.     The scoring plan is obvious to knowledgeable learners.

It becomes obvious when evaluating good essay questions that the scoring and evaluation is tantamount to the question.  The best essay questions will be to-the-point on the objective, provide a clear directive or explanation, and the scoring plan will be detailed, specific and complete.

I am teaching a Personal Finance class for the first time this semester.  The manufacturer provides test questions for each chapter.  The next chapter we will be addressing is Budgeting.  I thought I should use their questions since they are the “professionals” and I am just beginning and inexperienced.  The information I am learning is at least providing a basis for me to examine their questions more closely.  Two of their fill in the blank questions are:

*Assets minus liabilities equals ____________________________. 

*______________________ expenses are costs that vary in amount and type, depending on the choices you make.

This first question meets the requirements that there is one obvious, best answer and it is phrased with the blank at the end of the question.  The second question is more vague and could be rearranged with the blank at the end, making the question easier to read. We could rephrase the question as follows:

*Some of your expenses each month vary in type and amount by the choices you make, we call these ______________________ expenses.

One of their essay questions is:

*What is a prenuptial agreement?  Under what circumstances would a prenuptial agreement be appropriate? 

The answer is:  A prenuptial agreement is a contract that specifies what will happen if a marriage ends in divorce.  Generally, if two parties of unequal wealth enter into a marriage, a prenuptial agreement may be required in which the person without wealth agrees that he or she will receive a set amount as a settlement, rather than half of what the other person owns, if the marriage ends.  This type of agreement serves to protect an individual’s assets from a spouse who may have entered into the marriage fraudulently for financial gain. 

This essay meets the requirements that it targets specific information, it can be answered in less than 10 minutes, it is below the senior high reading level, and scoring is obvious to a knowledgeable learner and scorer.  The only issue I wonder about is that the publisher assigned 1 pt. to this question.  It provides the same weight to the true/false and multiple choice.  It will take me longer to score this question and some students will not answer it completely.

Thoughts on Digital Media and Advocating for Libraries

I realize we live in the digital age and with the ebook readers being the hot new item and digital media being so much cheaper to produce, we can expect this trend to continue.  My experience looking at ebooks though, make me glad I lived in an age with libraries filled with books, not just computers.  Recently, I had to look at the Interntational Wildlife Encyclopedia for an evaluation of reference sources.  These books made me want to keep looking at the pictures of other animals and scanning some of the information.  Yes, you can do that on the computer too, but what is more satisfying?  I know I would not have kept looking at more and more entries on the computer, but found myself flipping more and more pages.  I bet if you asked a military member if they would rather speak with their family in person or skyping, you would get a pretty good consensus of which is more preferable.

Advocating for Libraries—Professor Jesseman shared an article--

http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/save-oxfordshire-libraries-speech-philip-pullman.  The author espoused his belief that libraries do not need to prove their worth.  I came away from the article with an impression that he had a holier-than-thou attitude that libraries should not have to worry about their budgets, it was the job of the politicians to find enough money to support them fully.  He bemoaned the idea that some libraries would close.  I actually thought, it would be best if they closed all the libraries.  By selectively closing just a few, the others would simply become more heavily used and some of those people who could not access the other libraries would simply be forgotten.  By closing them all, people who realize sooner how valuable the asset really is to their communities.  After all, that is how public schools and libraries first came into existence.  People realized that was the difference for them, keeping them from being able to advance themselves.  They wanted better for their children and were willing to pay for it.  As the song goes, "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone!"

Initial Reflection

My initial reaction to the self-assessment was, “Wow, I really don’t have a clue about all these standards they are talking about.”  I was familiar with the AASL standards, but only because I read them for a different Media Science class last fall.  I was afraid that all the other students knew all about this stuff and I would be so far behind, I could not even contribute to the discussions.

            As far as my own personal literacy rating, I’m very capable and could probably help others if asked.  When I first filled out this questionaire, I marked the second to best selection, but looking at it now, I already feel comfortable replying that I can help other people find their answers and realize I do it quite often.  I can even say, yes, I am information literate according to the standards:  I can usually identify the question I am seeking the answer to, go about finding the answer, and apply the information I have discovered. 

            Looking at the instructional applications, I have some room for improvement.  I incorporate information literacy skills and processes in instruction.  Maybe I am proactively seeking ways to incorporate literacy skills into my lesson plans.  In the back of my mind, I am always trying to get the students to go a step further in the process.  I cannot say I am always successful.  Time seems to be a big factor.  Too often, my students simply take the first answer they find without evaluating it.  They just want any answer, whether it is correct or not.  They just want to finish the assignment. 

            At this point, I am somewhat “turned off” by all these standards.  I feel as if everyone is so focused on the standards, they can’t see the forest for the trees.  The talk is all about, “How does this meet the standards?”  Most of the standards seem pretty straightforward and are simply common sense.  We all talk about not having enough time, but it seems like we waste precious time focusing too much on the language of the various standards.  I find I simply take the lesson we are on and help each student accomplish the task on an individual basis.  Some students rarely have a question and others I practically have to hold their hand through the entire assignment.  Maybe I am just too new to this whole thing.