S.O.S.

A great new web site called S.O.S. (Situations, Outcomes, Strategies) was launched on Oct. 7. The following summery was taken from an eSchool News article found at this link.

Teachers and library media specialists searching for new and innovative ways to educate their students about effective research practices now have a new online tool at their disposal: S.O.S. (Situations, Outcomes, Strategies) for Information Literacy.
Launched Oct. 7 at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Pittsburgh, this Syracuse University program–made public now for the first time–is a free multimedia resource for K-8 teachers and media specialists who want their students to learn more, and become excited, about research.
During their own research for the program, project directors Ruth Small and Marilyn Arnone of the Center for Digital Education at Syracuse University focused in part on how to relieve the anxiety that children often have when beginning research projects.
“We asked how we can teach children in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them, yet still teaches them to evaluate sources or understand search engines,” Small said.
The pair’s research indicated that educators often have a difficult time finding lesson plans and motivational instructional methods that address information literacy skills and that they struggle to find plans relating these skills to classroom assignments and research projects in particular.
Information literacy–the ability to locate, organize, evaluate, manage, and use information–is critical for today’s learners, researchers say. These skills lay the groundwork for success in every student’s life.
The S.O.S. project is “a solution to an age-old problem,” said Julie Walker, executive director of AASL. “We talk a lot about integrating content and skills, whether those skills are information gathering or technology, but many people have a difficult time doing that.”
The project includes an online resource page where educators can view lessons plans, video clips, and other teaching materials submitted by teachers and library media specialists. Curriculum-integrated lesson plans and teaching ideas are linked to real-world examples of solid teaching, most notably focusing on collaborative efforts between classroom teachers and library media specialists, Small said. So far, about 150 educators have contributed at least one lesson plan.

S.O.S. for Information Literacy
http://www.informationliteracy.org/

I encourage you to take a look at the site. I have already sign up for a free account that allows me access to the 150+ lesson plans, and have found some that I will definitely be using in the coming weeks.