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Julie Douberly FRIT 7136 Y03 October 5, 2010

Seven Things You Should Know About 21st -Century High-School Students Scenario Riley is a high school junior. She and two of her peers have been assigned to work collaboratively on a multi-genre project that focuses on a 20th-century American poet. Using the site their teacher recommendedpoets.orgRiley and her group decide to browse according to Poetic Schools and Movements; then, recognizing Confessional Poetry from the unit they had just completed, they click on the link and soon choose Sylvia Plath. They then divvy up research tasks to complete at home before coming into class the next day. While one student must locate images of Plath, another is on the search for audio readings of Plaths poetry. Riley will be locating scholarly criticism on two of Plaths most well known poems. After dinner, Riley settles down at her computer. She considers going to Google to begin her search but then remembers the workshop from last semester in the library about using online databases for research. She goes to the Galileo site, chooses the browse by subject tab, and clicks on Literature. From there, she is able to enter the MLA International Bibliography. She tries a variety of search terms, including Plaths name and poem titles. Riley and her group share the information they are finding via Facebook, posting links to resources on each others walls and chatting about their findings through the IM function. The next day in class they are ready to compose their multi-genre project. They decide the best way to publish and present this work will be through an interactive wiki. What is it and who is doing it? According to Standards for 21st-Century Learners in Action, high school students today should be able to use a variety of search systemsonline and in the libraryto find resources

and to both evaluate those resources and to articulate that evaluation (21). Students should also be able to apply the same skills and methods used to locate academic information to find information related to personal interests (37). They should also be able to use social networking sites responsibly and safely while collaborating with other students (39). Todays students are to the manor born when it comes to technology. They have always had access to the internet and as they have grown, the world around them has become more and more mobile. These students dont want to waste time; they want their results instantaneously just like their text messages. They are constantly plugged into social networks, from their school to around the globe. While the media love to paint them as information gurus, dangerously skilled at all things technological, recent studies have sought to see beyond the hype and to analyze the real information-seeking behavior of the 21st-century learner. How does it work? Why is it significant and what are the downsides? Students are motivated by participating in Web 2.0 via user-generated content, social networking, mobile learning, and virtual learning environments (Rosen, 2010, p. 201). Students utilize these technologies frequently in their lives outside the classroom. These are their chosen media and educators must learn to meet the students where they are at in order to truly engage them. Group projects could easily incorporate these elements. However, the idea of bringing social networking sites into the classroom has the potential to make administrators very nervous, with the issues of cyber-bullying and sexting being highly litigious at the moment. Concrete technology ethics policies and ethics training for students may combat these worries. Students want librarians to be available to them as guides and assistants, but not as gatekeepers (Connaway, Radford, Dickey, Williams, & Confer, 2008, p. 132). While favoring

the virtual library over the traditional library, todays students still want constant reinforcement during projects (Rosen, 2010, p. 224) and seek emotional support during the [research] process (Connaway et al., 2008, p. 126). Students rely on and trust known brands, particularly Google, when it comes to searching online (Hargittai, Fullerton, Menchen-Trevino, & Thomas, 2010, p. 481). Students no longer searchthey google. This could make introducing students to new, more educationally sound search engines such as those found through Galileo a hard sale. However, one can only assume that the same reliance on branding would eventually occur if students were in daily contact with Galileo; it too could become a household name. While this reliance on Google could have a number of negative consequences such as an info glut of millions of sites most of which may not be related to their topic, to say nothing of their dubious reliabilityit is the perfect opportunity to explain how to narrow searches. For instance, students could be shown how to search specific fields such as titles and URLs to limit the amount of results. Students are results-oriented (Connaway et al., 2008, p. 125). Essentially, todays students are all about the product, with little regard for the process. In Rewired, Rosen (2010) explains this mindset, stating: It is all part of their fast-paced, technology-enriched lives, which encourage them to jump from here to there and back again in a nonlinear fashion that is not suited to setting step-by-step goals and timelines for completing a project (p. 224). While this may make lessons on information literacy more difficult to plan, it does cement the fact that such teaching should be done contextually, addressing issues as they arise within the project. This will be more meaningful to the students but much more work for the already over-taxed teachers and librarians.

Students want to find and access information immediately (Connaway et al., 2008, p. 125). Williams and Rowlands (2007) attribute this impatience to new technologies, stating that the speed of new media has cultivated a lowered tolerance for delay (p. 17). There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking instant information gratification, but this tendency has the possibility to lead to less consideration of the quality of information being found. This also stresses how important it is for students to have 24/7 access to library databases so these sources may be accessed from home on a pc or even via a smart phone. Students may also be more interested and open to learning insider tips about concise searching by means such as Boolean operators. Students are often willing to sacrifice quality for convenience when it comes to finding sources (Weiler, 2005, p. 50). In one study, Rosen (2010) found that when students use an internet search engine nearly half (42 percent) use only the first five links. Just 15 percent use the first 10 links, 12 percent use all the links of the first page only, and 20 percent use links on any of the first three pages. Just 3 percent use links on more than the first three pages, which most educators would argue is necessary to find the best and most reliable information (p. 155). There is a common misconception that the results that appear first in a list are the most relevant to the search topic. Most students do not realize that links which are sponsored have paid for the privilege of being in those top spots. It is important to stress the evaluation of sites based on their currency, relevancy, accuracy, authority, and purpose, not just on their proximity to the top of the results-list. Students do not explore information in any deep or reflective manner (Williams & Rowlands, 2007, p. 19). Instead, power browsing and viewing are the norm . . . reading appears to be only occasionally undertaken online, more often offline or not at all (p. 19). According to

Todd (2008), students spend as much time navigating virtual libraries as actually viewing what they find (p. 23). Students tend to go with the information that they encounter first, neglecting to evaluate the merit of the source. Rosen (2010) found that, of students considering an online source, just 40 percent . . . checked to see whether the site had recent information, while 44 percent checked whether the site was from an organization or an individual. Just a quarter of the respondents checked whether the author had reliable credentials (p. 169). With the abundance of information available instantly through the web, it is more important than ever that students learn to evaluate sources critically. Requiring that a document such as the CRAAP test handout be completed for each source in a project may be necessary until students internalize the concepts. Where is it going and what are the implications for teaching and learning? In the future, information is only guaranteed to move faster and faster. Students will demand ever-more instantaneous access. Technology will evolve daily. Students will be more likely to keep pace than educators. Librarians have the task of laying a solid foundation of critical thinking and ethics that can be applied to any form of information or technology. Todd (2008) argues that libraries should become knowledge commons instead of information places, which shifts the instructional program from accessing and locating and evaluating information, to providing students with the essential knowledge-developing competencies: critical thinking and communication competencies, knowledge-creation processes, developing arguments and positions and viewpoints; dealing with conflicting ideas and evidence . . . constructing creative and meaningful representations of new knowledge, and communicating ideas in thoughtful ways (p. 30).

References Connaway, L. S., Radford, M. L., Dickey, T. J., Williams, J. D, & Confer, P. (2008). Sensemaking and synchronicity: information-seeking behaviors of millennials and baby boomers. Libri, 58, 123-135. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/2008-2pp123-135.pdf Hargitai, E., Fullerton, L., Menchen-Trevino, E., & Thomas, Kristin Y. (2010). Trust online: young adults evaluation of web content. International Journal of Communication, 4, 468-494. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/636/423 Rosen, L. D. (2010). Rewired: understanding the igeneration and the way they learn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Standards for the 21st-century learner in action. (2009). Chicago: American Association of School Librarians. Todd, R. (2008). Youth and their virtual networked words: research findings and implications for school libraries. School Libraries Worldwide, 14(2), 19-34. Retrieved October 1, 2010, from http://asselindoiron.pbworks.com/f/14_2todd.pdf Weiler, A. (2005). Information-seeking behavior in generation y students: motivation, critical thinking, and learning theory. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(1), 46-53. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from ERIC database. Williams, P. & Rowlands, I. (2007, October 18). Information behavior of the researcher of the future. Retrieved October 1, 2010, from

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/downloads/GG%20Work%20Package%2 0II.pdf