Week #4 - Activity #1 - Trackstar - Blog Posting - Trackstar

The title of my post reflects my experience with Trackstar.  A concise layout of what to do, and how to do it, to review web sources.  It was informative, educational, and fun.  The process had a few challenges, but challenges provide opportunities for learning.


Each individual Trackstar has potential for teaching information literacy, but it is difficult to weight each item.  There are variables that come into play, such as what is the students' level of information literacy, how much prior knowledge of a subject they have and what interest does the student have in the topic being discussed.

As the Trackstar process would be used within a particular setting the instructor has the knowledge and resources to ensure that the information literacy level of each student is sufficient navigate through the Track or at least as provided resources and background information sufficient to allow the development of the required information literacy skills. 

A large challenge of any research into a topic is the "white noise" that one brings with them.  Prejudices, preconceptions, and bias all affect how we review a source.  The Trackstar method allows one to set aside (as much as possible) the subjective aspect of analyzing a source and to look at a topic item objectively, strictly by the content.

With those caveats one can say that utilizing the specific research leads given in this assignment would have varying results based.  If the targeted students were professional educators or concerned parents there would be more value in the No Child Left Behind track than if the targeted audience was high school freshmen.  This assumption can be made because of the interest in the content.  A high school foreign language teacher will approach the topic of bilingual education very differently from a education administrator of an ivy league private secondary school where the topic is not as relevant.  The segment on time travel is fun (in my opinion) and takes the heaviness of a topic out of learning the information literacy skills. 

I did learn from reviewing these research topics.  I drew upon prior knowledge of the medium and acquired new knoweldge as well.  Utilizing Trackstar to develop information literacy skills in students, of all ages and levels of interest, is a win win for students and instructors alike.