Interview with Joyce Valenza....

[Dennis O'Connor]

The UW-Stout Infobytes Newsletter just published a recent interview with Joyce Valenza. Read it here!

Joyce responds to the following questions. I offer them here, with the hope that the members of this group might respond to them too!

What are the greatest challenges for teachers and teacher-librarians when teaching the effective use of research skills/strategies?

You have spoken of students as being either "sponges," absorbing information passively; or "miners," actively searching for information gems. How can educators structure research assignments to help students become “miners” instead of “sponges”?

How can Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, del.icio.us, and GoogleDocs enhance and transform the teaching of K-12 information literacy/fluency skills?

How can we help our students create their own meaningful information spaces to support their work as learners?

[C]

I believe that one of the greatest challenges we face is our extreme caution when deciding which of the new 2.0 tools we'll use or allow our students to use. I am not even allowed to put student pictures up on the web, and our filter won't allow me to access a number of new technologies. This makes it difficult to get interest from teachers and impossible for students to access us on the Internet from school. We need more advocates for wider access at the administrative level.