Beyond Technology:
Questioning, Research
and the Information Literate School

Just what is an information literate school community and how would a group of teachers set about creating such a school?

This book sets out to answer those questions and describe how research and questioning can become central to the learning activities in a school.

Dr. Jamie McKenzie has enjoyed some 40 years working as a teacher, principal, superintendent and director of libraries, media and technology. Based on his experience with teachers and media specialists to emphasize higher level thinking, problem-solving and decision-making, this book brings you the best of Jamie McKenzie's thinking about launching challenging student research efforts and resource-based learning projects.

In recent years he has been helping schools and clusters of schools from all around the world to bring their learning activities into alignment with curriculum standards that ask us to consider all students to be thinkers.

Beyond Technology introduces an approach to research Jamie calls the Research Cycle and outlines questioning strategies so that each student leaves school equipped with a Questioning Toolkit.

In this book as with his others, he stresses basic concepts that lead to staff engagement and student performance on challenging thinking tasks. Most of these concepts are enduring - strategies that work as well in 2009 as they did in 1999. These approaches outlast the technology fads and bandwagons that come and go. Much of the advice provided will pass the test of time and prove valuable in 2019 and 2029. You can read examples and sample chapters below.

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Table of Contents
Sample Chapters Below
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During the final decade of the twentieth century, schools in many countries spent huge sums running cables and buying computers to connect classrooms to the Internet.

For this investment to pay dividends - to dramatically strengthen the skills with which students read, write and learn about their world - schools must offset this spending on equipment with two critical elements: 1) a clear focus upon program goals and 2) the provision of extensive professional development opportunities for all teachers. (Continued below)

Introduction

We must move past the current preoccupation with wires, networks and computers. We must move beyond technology for the sake of technology. IT (Information Technology) does not transform schools (by ITself).

Great teaching combined with information literacy and questioning skills might transform schools, but there has been entirely too much focus on the promise of wires and cables, laptops and desktops. There has been far too much spending on equipment and too little on professional development and program development.

Five years into this global “PC rush,” we have scanty evidence that the huge expenditures have improved student performance. Politicians wax eloquent about “knowledge economies” while squandering money on poorly conceived educational ventures that ignore what we know about teachers, teaching and change in schools. (Continued below)
.Table of Contents
.Part One
The Primacy of Questions
Introduction
Chapter One Questions:
The Greatest Technology of All
Chapter Two Research Programs for An Age of Information
Chapter Three A Questioning Toolkit
Chapter Four Students in Resonance:
Dissonance, Juxtaposition and Fresh Thinking
Chapter Five Questioning and the Information Literate
School Community
Chapter Six Mastering State Standards
with Questioning & Strategic Thinking
Chapter Seven Strategic Teaching
..Part Two - The Research Cycle
Chapter Eight The Research Cycle and Other Models
Chapter Nine Planning the Voyage
Chapter Ten The Hunt
Chapter Eleven More Great Hunting
Chapter Twelve Needles from Haystacks
Chapter Thirteen Regrouping Findings
Chapter Fourteen From Information to Persuasion
Chapter Fifteen Searching for the Grail
Chapter Sixteen Preventing the New Plagiarism
.Part Three - Research Modules
Chapter Seventeen Building Research Modules
Chapter Eighteen Levels of Modules
Chapter Nineteen Scaffolding for Success
Chapter Twenty Modules for State Standards
Introduction

We must move past the current preoccupation with wires, networks and computers. We must move beyond technology for the sake of technology. IT (Information Technology) does not transform schools (by ITself).

Great teaching combined with information literacy and questioning skills might transform schools, but there has been entirely too much focus on the promise of wires and cables, laptops and desktops. There has been far too much spending on equipment and too little on professional development and program development.

Five years into this global “PC rush,” we have scanty evidence that the huge expenditures have improved student performance. Politicians wax eloquent about “knowledge economies” while squandering money on poorly conceived educational ventures that ignore what we know about teachers, teaching and change in schools.

It is time we replace the term IT (Information Technology) with IL (Information Literacy). IT is mainly about flow - the movement of information through networks of various kinds. But adding information in a time of infoglut and data smog (Shenk, 1998) can actually interfere with learning and understanding. Information abundance can overwhelm and drown the learner in irrelevant and unreliable information.

IL is mainly about developing understanding and insight. Literacy is about interpretation of information to guide decisions, solve problems and steer through uncertain, complex futures.

What we need most now is a commitment to IL by schools as they strive to improve the reading, writing and thinking of their students. This will entail a sincere and robust commitment to professional development to help the current generation of teachers learn how to use the new electronic tools in ways that count.

This book, along with its companion, How Teachers Learn Technology Best (FNO Press, 1999) outlines the considerable investment in program development required for schools to make IL central to purpose. Problems of Readiness and Preparation, The September, 1999 report of Market Data Retrieval claims that more than 60% of the teachers replying to a survey indicated that they were not well prepared to use these technologies in their classrooms.

NOTE: Because this book is a collection of previously published articles, the reader will sometimes note that basic themes and some content is repeated across some of the chapters. The author has made some attempt to reduce redundancy by rewriting and winnowing the original articles. At the same time, some elements remain important within chapters such as those devoted to the Research Cycle. Chapter Eight provides an overview. The following six chapters provide an elaboration. Some repetition was unavoidable.