Thing 21: Student 2.0 Tools

It is great to see all of these research planning tools for students organized in one place! I think these tools would be very useful for librarians who work closely with teachers/professors on class research assignments. It would be very helpful for librarians to be able to introduce teachers/professors to these tools (The Assignment Calculator, RPC, and some of the resources in the RPC Teacher Guide), but I think most of them would be most useful in the classroom.

I think the Assignment Calculator and the RPC would work well with high school students, but I am not sold on using them with college students. As easy and quick as they both are to use, I just don't see a lot of students taking the time to follow all the steps, keep up-to-date, and fill in all of the information unless the students are required to do so by their professors. The same goes for most of the handouts in the RPC Teacher Guide. Some of the tip sheets (Boolean Basics, Improve Your Google Search) may be used by college students, but most students wouldn't take the time to complete handouts such as the Student Research Planning Guide, KWL & Q chart, Research Process: Questions & Answers unless they were class assignments.

I did take the time to open and read most of the resources in the RPC Teacher Guide and used it as an opportunity to "brush up" on my research skills. I do think that many of the handouts are useful for anyone doing research and I would definitely recommend these tools to any student in need of research assistance - especially at the beginning of his/her assignment. But, I definitely think these student 2.0 tools would be really valuable for media specialists, teachers, and students at the high school level since there is much more interaction among the 3 groups of people than at the college level (in many cases). It's not that librarians aren't involved in the research processes of college students (many are greatly involved by offering class presentations, individual reference appointments, having knowledge of class assignments, etc), but there are so many students and so many classes that they can't be as closely involved in class research assignments as librarians at the high school level may be. As a former high school teacher, I appreciate the opportunities my students had in the libraries and the knowledge and assistance the librarians offered me and my students on a regular basis. They are EXCELLENT resources! Thank you library media specialists!