College Searching 101 (From the Information Resources Perspective)

The month of April is fraught with decisions for most high school seniors.  Acceptance letters or not are in hand, and the deadline for decisions, May 1^st, approaches quickly.  There’s just enough time for a revisit, or for a few, a first-time campus visit.  Some students were lucky enough to know from the first foot on campus that this was the place for them; for others, proximity to home and affordability increase in importance.

The junior class watches with some amusement, some concern, and they know their time to begin the process is at hand.  There are many excellent annual guides, the College Board web site is full of possibilities, and there’s always the .edu web site from every school to draw you in.  The following titles may also help in planning those road trips over the summer and into the fall, or assist with writing the very important college essay.

Enjoy the ride!

Accepted!  50 Successful College Admission Essays, Tanabe, Gen, and Tanabe Kelly.  Supercollege LLC, 2011.

Admission Matters:  What Students and Parents Need to Know About Getting into College, Springer, Sally P., Reider, Jon, and Franck, Marion R.  Jossey-Bass, 2009

College Admission:  From Application to Acceptance, Step by Step, Mamlet, Robin and VanDeVelde, Christine, Three Rivers Press, 2011

Colleges That Change Lives:  40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges, Pope, Loren, Penguin Books, 2006.

The Cooper Hill College Application Essay Bible, Liberman, Rosette, ed., Cooper Hill Press, 2004.

Fiske Countdown College:  41 To-Do Lists and a Plan for Every Year of High School, Fiske, Edward B. Sourcebook Inc., 2009

Getting In:  The Truth About College Admissions, Human Relations Media, (DVD)

How to Say It to Get into the College of Your Choice:  Application, Essay, and Interview Strategies to Get You the Big Envelope, Metcalf, Linda, Prentice Hall Press, 2007.

The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 2012:  Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know, 38^th ed., Yale Daily News Staff, 2012

Writing a Successful College Application Essay, Ehrenhaft, George, Barrons, 2008.

A Few Words on Doubting

The other day our daughter sent us a funny poster from philosophynews.com.  One of the captions read “Doubting is a gateway to thinking. Stop it before it starts.”  Meant as a plug for getting your kids to critically view the world, I would say this poster should go global and encourage everyone to doubt when approaching information particularly that found on the web.

Last fall I reported on the sad and discouraging student progress on a web evaluation lesson and noted the downward spiral of successfully identifying web sites as hoaxes.  I am sorry to report that in the last two classes, no one has passed the test.   I gave the students an array of web sites to review and evaluate for:

- accuracy (use your education and background knowledge, or, if it’s too good to be true…),
- authority (credentials),
- objectivity (is there a bias),
- coverage (is it too broad, do the links enhance the site, etc.), and
-  timeliness (how up-to-date, can you find a meaningful date)

This time the sites dealt with whales living in fresh water, an ancient kingdom existing in Nevada at the present time, a medical facility insisting accurate prediction of genetic makeup of offspring as well as the possibility of male pregnancy, and a site that I can only describe as very Monty Pythonesque.  Not one student answered that whales cannot live in fresh water, many felt they could use the site on the ancient kingdom for a social studies project, many were reassured by the white medical coats and impressive medical credentials for the third site, and for the first time, someone felt that Jackalope might actually exist (the Pythonesque site).

What to do?  I believe that one of the answers lies in READING.  And by this I mean reading more, and getting into the reading habit earlier.  Parents who read to infants and maintain this tradition throughout the formative years have a better chance of hard-wiring these malleable brains into listening for information and making connections to what they already know and heard about.  These children are exposed to the world before they ever think about getting on a plane, or interacting with someone speaking another language, or trying a new food.  They realize that the written word (from whatever platform) has tremendous power.  They will have a greater frame of reference from which to conclude something smells “fishy” (no offence to those who thought whales could live in fresh water). So my humble advice is to READ. For those who read, continue the good work.  Those who have lapsed, get back into the habit.  And for those who do not, make it part of your culture and spread the wealth and the power.  Without it, you too will believe everything you read in a very unfiltered world.

It's Budget Time Again

School budgets are difficult to put together, especially in difficult economic times.  Here are a few talking points should your district choose to decrease funding or cut library/information literacy programs.

·         The highest achieving students come from schools with good school library centers.¹ School libraries are there for every child.  They are the great equalizers of society and making cuts take away the opportunity for all children to excel in every area of education, especially science and math.  The school library has traditionally been the place where low-income students gain access to the resources and learning experiences that make STEM subjects relevant and rich.²

·         Information literacy is a survival skill in the Information Age. Instead of drowning in the abundance of information that floods their lives, information literate people know how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision – whether the information they select comes from a computer, a book, a government agency…. “ ³

·         An Omnibus Appropriations Bill which includes $28.6 million in federal funds for school libraries in FY2012, which implies there is merit in funding/staffing school libraries, was signed into law in December, 2011.

·         Books (either print or e-book) are not a dying breed. For 2010 $11.67 billion sales mark a 3.6% increase over 2009, and E-book sales continue to break records with +164.4 percent gains for 2010.⁴

·         The Common Core requires print sources at a great variety of independent reading levels;And with the Common Core, as you go to higher level grades, with a wider span of independent reading levels, there must be an adequate supply of publications across genres.

·         Internet reliance rewards a shorter attention span.⁵  Great for two-minute background knowledge, not great for in-depth analysis and research or building academic stamina.

·         Google is not a library. Public, university, or corporate libraries are not abandoning print resources. Their circulation statistics show dramatic increases in usage.  No matter which path a student decides to take after high school, they should be prepared to use a variety of sources.

·         Not all students own iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Nooks, or have access to high-speed internet or even internet at home. Maintaining a content-rich and up-to-date print collection improves equitable access to information.Lower literacy rates further the class divide.  Students who can afford to purchase their own copy, or who can get to the public library will have the advantage.

·         The Pew Research Center, in conjunction with the Chronicle of Higher Education, recently surveyed 1,055 college presidents from two-to-four-year schools.  More than half of those said they’ve seen an increase in plagiarism, nearly all say computers and the internet have played a major role in the rise of plagiarism. ⁶ As students learn to research, they need a variety of platforms from which to draw information to remind them that information is not always public knowledge and should be cited.

·         It is important to have the new titles and to replace well-loved titles with clean/bright versions. We pay attention to the prices we pay for titles.  We use vendors who give us the best value for the money, and accept donations from a variety of sources.  _______________________________________________________

 ¹ Keith Curry Lance, Marcia J. Rodney and Christine Hamilton-Pennell, How School Librarians Help Kids Achieve Standards, 2000.
² From Nancy Everhart, president of The American Library Association, 2011. http://www.ala.org. Accessed 2/23/12
³ From the Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, from The American Library Association. http://www.ala.org Accessed 2/23/12
⁴ From The Association of American Publishers, http://www.publishers.org/press/24. Accessed 2/23/12
⁵ Carr, Nicholas.  The Shallows:  What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.  New York:  W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2010.
 ⁶ Choney, Suzanne,msnbc.com, Steal this Report:  College Plagiarism Up, Says Pew Report. http://pewinternet.org/ Accessed 2/23/12