Exploratorium 2012: Swenson, Andrea

Table #5          LibGuides or Google Sites:  What Should You Use?

 

Audience:       Middle/High school

 

Presenters:     Andrea Swenson, Paula Zamora Gonzalez, Joy Ferguson

East Side Community

420 E. 12^th St.

NY, NY 10009

Library Web site  http://eschslibrary.wordpress.com

E-mail   Aswenso@schools.nyc.gov

 

Description, Goals, Intended Outcomes: 

The librarian, LMS student teachers and two teachers created research guide websites for major research projects.  The goal of the research guide is to create a site where students can get all of the information they need to do the research for a project or a class. When given an opportunity to use LibGuides, we decided to use LibGuides for two guides, and to use a Google Site for the other guide in order to compare the two platforms. 

One site is for the 11^th grade biology performance-based graduation requirement, in which students need to do original lab research, supported by peer-reviewed articles.  The second and third sites are for the 12^th grade history classes, which require a research paper. Having a research website is a wonderful way to combine resources from the library and from the teacher in one place for the students.  In addition, having those resources in a digital format that can be adapted for other classes is a time-saver.  

Students will need to be able to access the “deep web” for the rest of their lives, especially in higher education.  By giving them experience using a research guide to access databases, tutorials and handouts, we are preparing them for the future.

 

Process to Develop and Implement this Project:

1. Meet with teacher(s).  The librarian and the teacher need to decide what is important to have available to students on this site, and who will be responsible for what sections.  The librarian will need to have examples of other sites to show the teacher(s).  Teachers will usually need to send the librarian digital copies of assignments, handouts, and other parts of the assignment.

2. Make a timeline for completion.  Make sure to leave enough time for the teacher to review the site before the class uses it—there are often revisions that are needed!

3. Make a quick design plan on paper, and determine which pieces can be borrowed from other sites, and which pieces need to be written. 

4. Build the site.  This often needs a little more time than has been designated, and may have to be done, in part, outside of the school, depending on whether the network within the school building is robust and fast enough.

5. Create a lesson plan to introduce the students to the site, the assignment, and the materials available on the site.

6. Evaluate the site after the students have used the site for several days or a week.

Budget:   For LibGuides, $524/year (FAMIS); Google Sites, free

 

Timeline:  The process for building a site can take as little as 4 days, but initially, the librarian should plan for approximately 10-14 days from the beginning of the design process until the time the site is ready.

 

Evidence of Outcomes, Possible Adaptations, Lessons Learned:

Our experience with students using these guides has been excellent.  Students are accessing the databases of the NYPL and of the school for their research, which has been difficult in the past. 

Either of these platforms could be used for a whole library site, and there are many examples of high school libraries, in particular, using LibGuides.

The major lesson we learned was that creating the text and tools to go on a site is a significant amount of work, in part because all writing for the web needs to be concise and well planned.  Planning out the guide on paper was very helpful, both to provide some idea of how much work needed to be done, and what text/tools needed to be written or found in order to create the guide.  Using other’s guides was essential—good design is often invisible, but bad design is much easier to spot. 

 

Common Core State Standard(s) addressed:

Writing Standard for Literacy in Science for Grades 11-12:

#7:  Conduct sustained research to answer a question; #8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources; and #9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

 

Information Fluency Continuum (IFC) Skill(s) addressed:  Investigate:  Evaluates, paraphrases, summarizes, and interprets information that answers research questions and gives and accurate picture of the research topic.

 

Skill(s) taught:  Using databases and search tools; accessing a password-protected website; accessing abstracts to evaluate usefulness

 

Assessments:  The assessments we used were students’ notes from sources; anecdotal feedback on the site; and, in some cases, the counts of how many times a resource was accessed through the research guide.

 

Resources Used:  LibGuides subscription; other websites for samples, tools and ideas