[audio-player]
44:49 minutes (20.52 MB)Karen Janowski quoted Brian Crosby from his blog title, "learning is messy' and Cathy from South Carolina, suggests that we "muddy the waters." Are you willing to get messy with us?

Sylvia Norton, from Maine's MARVEL, says "I think we spend a lot of time talking about quality information but not always walking the talk when it comes to expectations in student work and what we accept without question"

Are you wiling to take that step this year and dip your own toes in the water? Here's your homework:

Find you own state's database collection (paid for by your taxes!). As Cathy said, these are your "free search tools." Who doesn't like a great bargain? You may go to your school library site or you may go to your public library site if you don't have a direct link already in your own bookmarks. You may need a public library card number or some other state identification number.

Now, think of something you are wondering about. Is it your aunt's newly diagnosed illness, is it a question about Iraq, is it the history of a neighborhood fixture, is it something about a book you've been reading this summer? Search in these state funded free resources and see what you find. If you can, we'd love you to do the same search in some other places too, maybe Google, maybe findarticles.com, maybe Wikipedia...

PLEASE share your results. The only way we can continue to learn is by using what Worldbridges.net calls "open source learning" where we all add to the body of knowledge and share, after all this is Teachers Teaching Teachers!

Add a New Note to our Google Notebook that lists your state, your urls used, the names of the databases you used, your search request and most importantly your results and reactions !!

Come back next week, same time, same place and let's see what we can collectively learn. Let's all get messy this week!

Google Notebook for August 22, 2007 Teachers Teaching Teachers:
http://www.google.com/notebook/#b=BDQOrSwoQsJqSocci

Now for some show notes and thoughts:

Where should our students be starting?

Cheryl from Maine says: I would love our school librarians to use Marvel first and not answer kids questions in Google until they have done a Marvel search!
Kevin from Florida says: " I do think there is value in students 'starting out' in wikipeida to get the juices flowing....."
Troy from Michigan discovered that one FindArticles search had 1/3 of the links on the first page requiring money to open them. "One concern with Find Articles -- to what extent does that site represent the full range of periodicals and journals available? Moreover, what about the advertisements that are present on that site?"

If we are encouraging students to blog for voice, action and sometimes response, isn't it important that we teach them to arm themselves with accurate and reliable information as a starting point?

Courtney from GALILEO in Georgia says, "... facts and past research - databases; someone's first-hand perspective - blog postings

LindaN also made an important point, "I think it depends on the depth of background knowledge the kids have on a topic."

Sylvia from MARVEL in Maine, reminds us, "I've never had a parent show up for a parent conference because they were worried that their kid didn't pass information literacy."
Later Sylvia also noted, "I do see adults every day who do not know how to find and use good accurate information as part of their daily problem solving."

What do you think? We want to especially thank Joyce Valenza and everyone else who is helping to bring this important topic to the blogosphere and the attention of teachers and librarians and vendors!

Here are the links from the text chat in time order:
Library Terms That Users Understand
http://www.jkup.net/terms.html
Google Notebook link for Teachers Teaching Teachers notebook for Aug. 8 and Aug. 15 discussions
http://www.google.com/notebook/#b=BDQOrSwoQk93r3cMi
Joyce Valenza's students explain it - Databases are Different!
http://springfieldvideo.edublogs.org/2007/03/01/databases-are-different/
Texas State Databases
http://www.texshare.edu/
Georgia Public Library Service
http://www.georgialibraries.org/lib/galileo.html
Public look at the Google Teachers Teaching Teachers notebook
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/07807265150553936842/BDQOrSwoQk93r...
Direct link to GALILEO, Georgia State Databases
http://www.galileo.usg.edu
Scholarly vs. Popular vs. Trade vs. Primary Sources from Springfield Township High School Virtual Library- an amazing resource!
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/scholarly.html
Brian Crosby's blog, a fourth grade teacher at Agnes Risley School in Sparks, Nevada.
http://www.learningismessy.com/blog/
Wesley Fryer's blog
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/
A trail is a collection of web pages, assembled and annotated by any Trailfire member, on just about anything under the sun.
http://trailfire.com
Joyce Valenza's blog NeverEndingSearch on School Library Journal
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334.html
Lee Baber's blog
http://web.mac.com/lbaber/iWeb/LeeBaber/Blog/Blog.html
Courtney's list of state funded virtual libraries
http://del.icio.us/cmcgough/statevirtuallibraries

[audio-player]
34:00 minutes (7.76 MB) ­ In Medias Res: Research, RSS and Google Reader

We invite you to join us in the middle of what promises to be a series of conversations about research, RSS, and using Google Reader in the classroom. Although we tried to stay focused on Google Reader we did stray into other topics, such as: evaluating easily accessible online resources (blog, podcasts, news articles, magazine and journal articles, Wikipedia entries, web sites...). We also plan to discuss using library database (or the Deep Web) later this month.

We've been here before, especially last spring on Teachers Teaching Teachers:  http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?cat=13

Take note of this podcast: http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?p=88

Also, now we have Eric Hoefler's "Research 2.0" as a resource: http://hoefler.wikispaces.com/Research%202.0

So if you want to find out where we've been. There are some resources for you!

To follow where we might go next, listen to the podcast attached to this post. On this webcast, TTT 64,  the teachers (and Lee Baber's student, our special guest, CJ) began talking about how we want to do the "research, RSS, Google Reader..." thing better this year. Joining Paul Allison, Lee Baber, and Susan Ettenehim were:

• Donna Bragg, Lehigh Valley Writing Project, Pennsylvania
• Gail Desler, Area 3 Writing Project, California
• Barbara (Bee) Dieu, Sao Paulo, Brazil ( whose students are aggregated at http://dekita.org/orchard )
• Tricia Scott, Delaware Writing Project

Please join us!

We're working on a wiki page to capture our planning for the fall. We would love for you to take a moment and read our thoughts so far, to follow a few of the suggestions, and to add to this page.

Using Google Reader

And, of course, you've got to join us on this Wednesday's Teachers Teaching Teachers (at 9:00 pm Eastern / 6:00 pm Pacific on EdTechTalk.  Help us form a collaborative project around Google Reader and blogging.

[audio-player]
52:10 minutes (23.88 MB) ­This was a special webcast from the National Writing Project's (NWP) ­Tech Matters`07 -- an annual summer institute sponsored by the Tech Liaisons Network of the NWP. In addition to several teachers who are working together in Chico, CA as part of Tech Matters, we were joined by Writing Project teachers Bill O'Neil (Trenton WP) and Bud Hunt (Colorado State University WP). Also two Writing Project teachers who were participants in Tech Maters`06 joined us, Donna Bragg, Penn State Lehigh Valley Writing Project and Lynne Culp, UCLA Writing Project. Thanks also to Susan Ettenheim who streamed for us and edited this podcast, Lee Baber who added more music to our lives, and Doug Symington who was there to remind us about his show EdTech Brainstorms, which on on Thursdays nights(Americas)/Friday (Asia,Oceania) 2amGMT.