The art and science of finding information of interest to us is traditionally taught in schools through with the label favored by librarians: “research.” My thinking of late has focused upon how we teach and employ research gathering in schools. One label I have been using is “Research 2.0,” in conjunction with our “Goochland Twenty-First Century Skills” or “G21.” The other is “infoseeking fluency,” a skill set that is part of “Research 2.0” but can stand on its own.

While college-bound students still ought to be concerned with the skills in conducting their own research, the majority of the population likely does not need to be engaged in the complexities involved with proper research. Kids today have their hands on all kinds of Web-connected devices, from computers to handhelds. Let’s focus on making the most of these devices for getting our hands on quality information, fast.

My “Research 2.0” method includes a component that offers students the opportunity to practice the application of summary and keywords to what they find online. This practice builds their ability to quickly summarize content, the more they do it. This is what I refer to when I speak of “infoseeking fluency.” It’s building one’s ability to choose good search terms when starting new searches. It’s building the skill to input the best words and phrases into your Google search bar.

Let’s break down this process. First, look at the more formal “workflow” for “Research 2.0.”

The process begins with questions: what do we need to know? When we approach a search engine or a database with our queries, we many times have to come up with keywords. This first step in the searching process (yellow) is where we’re aiming to build fluency. The search is conducted, and content is collected. The rest of the workflow takes place in an area we call the student’s “personal library,” which could be a word processing document, as illustrated below, or a database file, a blog, a wiki, or just about anything that’s conveniently searchable and digital.

For collection, students copy and paste content found online. They can highlight keywords and phrases of interest, but eventually, they will move on to the next step, summarization. Before they summarize, they should verify the information they found. What other sources (online or not) verify what you found? These verification sources get listed too. In summarization, they are going beyond paraphrasing: they are summarizing and condensing the content they captured online.

After summarizing their sources, students may encounter a need to reconsider, or re-formulate their initial research questions. If so, they go back to the beginning. By forming more questions, choosing new keyword phrases, and conducting a search, they refine the search process.

Alongside each “hit” found, students will also be listing the precise uniform resource locator (URL, web address, permalink) from where they did their copy/paste. Finally, students will be applying tags to each source they find. This is not unlike the process used by members of delicious.com, who apply keyword tags to each website they bookmark.

This process of collecting information in a student’s personal library, including the layout seen here in four columns, should work well for a variety of sources, even those beyond hypertext. While infoseeking fluency is centered on bettering online search, our information ultimately may not all be yet digital.

• Search Engines
• Invisible (Paid) Web Sources
• Online Read/Write Media (Blogs)
• Television
• Podcasts, online video
• Books
• Periodicals, Newspapers

For more, see my G21 page online.