Works are referred to as artifacts in ePEARL. IS-21 tasks are listed separately from other ePEARL artifacts so they are quickly identifiable. As a teacher, you may click on a title to display an IS-21 work. If a student uses certain ePEARL features (Task description, Task goals, Strategiesor Reflections), these will be displayed along with the Report icon.
Features
IS-21 provides a dynamic and interactive introduction to the three-phase Inquiry Process, enabling students to organize, evaluate, and synthesize the wealth of information available today, and then to creatively communicate it to others. Students are also able to link their work to ePearl, an electronic portfolio designed to encourage self-regulated learning.
- Start: Establish task and understanding of task
- Define: Determine big question
- Brainstorm: Identify what is known, what isn't known (little questions), and what doesn't need to be known
- Keywords: Extract key concepts from each question
- Search Strings: Establish relationships between keywords and related words
- Resources: Review what type of information is needed to answer each question
Start
Purpose: Students must start the inquiry process by defining their topic. Here they are asked to write out the assigned task and to describe in their own words their understanding of this task.
Define
Purpose: The first step in the inquiry process is defining a topic to be researched (a big question).
Brainstorm
Purpose: Brainstorming helps student think about the sub-topics related to their big question. These will help them when it comes time to search for information. Students reflect on their prior knowledge about their topic and make decisions about what they need to know about (sub-topics) and what they don't need to know about.
Keywords
Purpose: Students must extract the main concepts (keywords) from each of their questions. These keywords will be used when searching for information and may be revised during the process.
Search strings
Purpose: Before searching for information, students must think about how they can appropriately arrange their keywords into logical relationships to create a search string. Boolean operators can be used for this.
Resources
Purpose: Different questions require that students locate different types of information. Specific types of information are found in certain sources. It is important for students to be able to select the right source to get the best information.
- Explore: Investigate and decide on appropriate sources (focus on web only for this prototype)
- Select: Conduct searches and mark potentially useful web sites (create working bibliography)
- Review: Read sources and evaluate the quality and relevance of each (refine working bibliography)
Explore
Purpose: Now that students have defined their search terms and thought about the types of information they need to find, they should think about how they will go about finding this information. Because IS-21 focuses on web-based sources, students should investigate the differences between directories, search engines and meta search engines.
Select
Purpose: Once students have completed their preliminary investigation, they should conduct their final online searches using the tools that provided the most useful information. They then select (or Mark) some promising sources. This requires that they copy and paste or type in bibliographic information for each type of source (i.e. Book, Webpage, Periodical etc). IS-21 uses these entries to generate a list of sources formatted in MLA citation style (a working bibliography).
Review
Purpose: Students must review their list of potentially useful sources, evaluate each one and then select those that best meet their evaluation criteria.
- Note taking (or note making): Read each source for understanding and document information
- Synthesize: Interpret information, organize ideas using visual organizers, and form conclusions
- Acknowledge: Establish final list of sources to be used in the final product (bibliography)
- Produce: Create the final product
Note taking
Purpose: Once students have reviewed their sources, they will use these sources to obtain information, which is relevant in answering their sub-topics. Students will generate a key idea, and its supporting evidence through paraphrasing or quoting the source.
Synthesize
Purpose: Students will review the information they have obtained, organize the information, and determine if they have answered the big question.
Acknowledge
Purpose: Students create a final bibliography of all the sources they have used to obtain information.
Produce
Purpose: Students creatively communicate their new understanding in the form of a final product that was defined at the beginning of the inquiry process.
Report
Clicking on this icon will provide access to a report that documents all of the steps the student has completed within IS-21. At any point during this process, you may access their work.
Providing Feedback
Active feedback boxes will be available for Goals, Reflections, for the work itself or for the entire portfolio.
