Week #3 - Assignment THINK ALOUD

Website:  http://www.politico.com

Article: NRA plan: Let teachers carry guns by Kevin Robillard

Kevin Robillard is a more recent college graduate (2010, University of Maryland, College Park) and is a breaking news reporter for Politico.  He has his own website and has written fairly extensively within the political world of Washington D.C.

The owner of the site, Politico is a privately owned company that is relatively new.  Started in 2007, it has a goal to provide non-partisan political news.  The company proudly claims that they are the most widely read piece by the major political powers in Washington D.C.  I was not able to find independent information to confirm this statement.

The website has been very active since 2007 when it was launched.  It peaked during the recent Presidential election, but is still staying active.  The external links appear to work and connect to the appropriate sites.

With this article there is heavy emphasis on the NRA stance on teachers armed with gun, but no overt support of the NRA plan is given.  The writing supports the title of the article and virtual no space is given to those who oppose arming teachers. 

Robillard, K. (2013, April 2). Nra plan: Let teachers carry guns. Politico. Retrieved from http://politi.co/Xo6mLe

Gilchrist think aloud from Jane Gilchrist

Here is my ThinkAloud.  I found an article on Politico.com about the NRA plan to let teachers carry guns.  I questioned whether a website named Politico is bi or non partisan and it is, there is a real person with a good non-partisan record behind the article.  He provided links to his NRA source and made no independent statements with his personal opinion.  The NRA does have a plan, but will it work?

UPDATE:  Step 7:

Explain why it is important to provide students with information literacy skills in the digital age.

• Explain why projects like the ThinkAloud might provide students with a more meaningful information literacy experience that reading textbooks. Use this weeks reading to support your explanation.

 Even as a computer literate adult I found the Think Aloud a challenging process.  I suspect that if I were to do several of them, I would become more comfortable in the articulation of the thought process.  The creation of a ThinkAloud is a newer concept and for a graphically based society, a more comfortable medium than a more traditional view.

Ironically the comments of Tamim Ansary in A Textbook Example of What's Wrong With Textbooks," supports this evolution in ideology.  "They [textbooks] are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past  (Ansary, 2004)." This creative use of language showcases the need to create something new and do things differently which is further supported through Geoff Ruths comments such as, "Some textbooks do a fabulous job of making science relevant, but others insult students' intelligence by oversimplifying and fragmenting the subject matter so much that it becomes incomprehensible. (Ruth, 2005)."  

If textbooks continue to make a disappearance from the classroom students will need to depend more heavily upon the information literacy skills to continue to learn and even excel in the classroom.  With such a variety of educational offerings, no longer confined to a presecribed text, students will need the skills to evaluate, question, synthesize, hypothesis, and be more in touch with the materials they are exposed to.

Anisary, T. (2004) A textbook example of what's wrong with education. Edutopia, Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine

Ruth, G. (2005). No books, no problem:teaching without a text. Edutopia, Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/teaching-without-text