http://koreancurriculum.wikispaces.com/

Overall, I think my project went pretty well. I was surprised by the amount of material I found in our relatively small children’s department on Korean culture.

Strengths:

A quality wiki with lots of resources

A tribute to a Korean war POW

A feeling of accomplishment

Weaknesses:

No real lead on teaching war concepts to kids

Not incorporating professional resources as I went along, instead of just highlighting them!

Challenges:

Focusing on one age group and one aspect of Korea

Keeping up with a blog on a regular basis!
The 8W’s Model is a good model for information inquiry. I liked that I could jump from step to step and add information as I came across it. I could have maintained my focus on the Korean war, but then my research would be directed toward older students.

My experiences are probably different from those of children and young adults. First, I have a strong knowledge of libraries and cataloging systems that most young people do not. In other words, I know where to look for what I want. I also have more experience building research projects and writing research papers. I had a good deal of freedom throughout my project, whereas younger students are usually more restricted.  Finally, I am able to sift through internet information fairly quickly, where younger students tend to get hung up on one website.

I will communicate my ideas to others in a variety of formats. First, I have had conversations with several coworkers who had no idea about Chris’s dads service, even though we all sat through the same power point presentation last November. One of my coworkers actually said “That stuff probably means more to you than the rest of us.” Well, “that stuff”  involved someones husband, someones father, someones friend. I want to do my part to tell his story.

I have already shared this information with my family, and they are all supportive of my efforts. I will be sharing the wiki with y classmates, and I hope to share it with an afterschool club sometime this spring.  I would like to work with Chris to create a more personal tribute to her father, perhaps on a web page. I googled him, and I found very little information. I would like to change that.

The information I uncovered can be used in a variety of ways. There are two excellent curriculum connections on my wiki that would allow educators to present a lesson on Korea to different age groups. Adults could use my lists to create pathfinders, or create their own lesson plans. I created a wikispace to share my findings. Korea is important to me because  54,256 American troops lost their lives defending the peninsula. My husband is an Iraq war veteran, and I do not want his service to be forgotten. Men like Gilbert Christie have lost their chance to share their story, and it is up to younger generations to keep their stories alive. Also, I think I feel a personal connection, because I was just eighteen the first time we moved to Korea. Many of the troops that stormed Inchon were the same age as me. I was scared enough to be moving to a foreign land, and I had the logistical support of the US government. The troops that fought in the Korean War were thousands of miles from home without access to the instant communication that we take for granted today, and they were engaged in combat.

YES War Resources:

The Korean War    Tom McGowen

The Korean War    Andred Santella

The Korean War     R. Conrad Stein

Wiggling was the longest part of this activity. I sat down with about 25 nonfiction books on Korea, and I sifted through them one by one. I was looking at the age of the material, the reading level, and the availability of web resources or photos.  I stacked the books into three piles, a yes, a no, and a maybe.

YES resources:

Count your way thorough Korea   Jim Haskins

Discovering Cultures-Korea   Sarah DeCapua

My Name is Yoon  Helen Recorvits

The Name Jar  Yangsook Choi

A Single Shard  Linda Sue Park

Goodbye 382 Shin Dang Dong  Frances Park and Ginger Park

Maybe Resources:

Chi-Hoon A Korean Girl  Patricia McMahon

Kim Jong Il’s North Korea  Alison Behnke

Waiting for Mama  Lee Tae-Jun

NO Resources:

Korea  Karen Jacobsen

Enchantment of the world Korea  Sylvia McNair

Remembering Korea  Brent Ashabranner

No’s were materials that seemed too dated, too stuffy, or too brainy for my purposes.

I realized that I had several good quality picture books for 1st-3rd grades, so I started to focus on those materials instead of the nonfiction resources.

I located information using a variety of techniques. I talked to coworkers to see if they could recommend any age appropriate materials. I used the internet to locate several websites that offered photos, videos and extension activities. I compiled these websites in a delicious format, so that others could access them. I used the Google search engine, and I documented my keywords in my earlier posts. Korean war, Korean Culture and Korea were all successful keywords.

As I was webbing, I decided to change my foucs to Korean culture instead of the Korean War. I felt it was more appropriate for a young audience, and I was having trouble finding enough resources to tackle “War for kids”. I taught preschool in a military facility for four years, and I should have known how tough that topic was going to be.  My questions got tweaked, as I explained in an earlier post.

Based on Dr. Lambs suggestions presented in the 8W’s (Blue Book, 55) I sorted my information into fiction, nonfiction, and live categories. I needed fiction books to appeal to a young audience and meet the curriculum connection guidelines. I needed nonfiction materials to give my project a factual basis. Finally, I had a live resource that helped me choose my topic. I relied on the old “read and review” method of determining which resources were primary and which were secondary. I chose based on my interpretation of the materials.

The best part of webbing was talking to my coworker, Chris Bradfield. Her father was a POW during the Korean War. I initially contacted her via email so I could consider our interaction a technology tool, but later I had a conversation with her about the same materials. It was so interesting to hear her recollections, I could have stayed all day.

I wondered a lot of things about Korea. At first, I was more hung up on the war, but I figured out that I had a problem because I wanted the project to be appropriate for young children and I was not finding the kind of information I really wanted. I started brainstorming about the resources I did have available. Even though at first I was frustrated with Kuhlthau’s Prewriting Information Search Process (Blue Book Page 40) I eventually realized that I was indeed exploring my resources before I picked a topic. I had always thought about research the other way, picking a topic and then finding resources. My questions were random and they evolved throughout the assignment. My foucs for the project became Korean culture, with a nod to the Korean war.

In reviewing my blog, I feel like I have brainstormed a few times. At first, I had two topics that I could not choose between, so I watched and waited, until I saw a news blurb on North and South Korea. That led me to my topic. Watch out for me… I have a plan!

Somewhere along the way, I missed the fact that our text information was to be included with individual posts. Since posts are dated, there is no way to go back and insert them without showing a later edit. So instead, I plan to show the comments I hightlighted throughout this project and explain how they tie into my original posts.

One of the things I noted when I was working on my webspiration brainstorming project was Virginia Rankins  Presearch Strategies as outlined in the Blue Book (38). Rankin says to build a vocabulary of names and nouns that will likely take you to more information. I did that by using little lightbulb icons to illustrate the information that these people might be able to share with me.

Another topic I highlighted was Callison’s description of Free Inquiry, as listed in the Blue Book (100). Callison says that Free inquiry is  personal, with an independent inquiry agenda. I was drawn to two sections of this explanation, including “Questions are drawn from the student’s personal curiosity at the time of the assigned activity and are strong enough to continue beyond the academic experience- a lifelong learning mystery” and “New questions continue to emerge the more a student investigates and matures-demanding  higher level reasoning, higher level information, and more controlled methods to investigate for possible answers.”

In response to the first statement, my questions about Korea were definitely drawn from my personal curiosity at the time of the assigned activity. My husband was stationed in Korea two times, and I loved living there. Recently, he has began pursuing a VA disability claim, and so his service has once again become a focal point in our lives.  At the time of this project, I was searching through records and trying to track down dates when I ran across a photo of the two of us at the DMZ. Korea started floating around in my brain, and I was trying to figure out what I could do for work to create a children’s program that taught a little about Korean culture.

The second part of the argument is that new questions continue to develop. They sure did!! I initially wanted to focus on the Korean war, and I evolved into the Korean culture. My new questions included “What materials do I have available for a Korean program?” “What children’s books are appropriate for 1st-3rd grades?” ” What can I share about my experiences in Korea in order to educate others?”.

I also found myself interested in Kuhlthau’s sequential library skills program. It caught my attention because my background is in early childhood ed, and she based her program on Piaget’s stages of cognitive development… which is right up my alley! Her program, outlined in the Blue Book (86-87) explains the basic reasoning behind the differing abilities of researchers of different ages. In other words, research is going to be different at different age levels because of limitations of cognitive ability.

One of the questions we were asked to address was how our research process was different than that of a young adult.  Based on Kuhlthaus reasoning, a fundamental difference is that I have moved through all of Piaget’s steps of cognitive development, so my abilities are going to be different than that of a younger person. Another difference is that I work at a library, so I have some formal training in how to locate resources and filter through websites that a young adult might not have. Anyone who has suffered through a cataloging class can attest to the fact that you learn how to formally locate resources.  I was able to participate in a Free Inquiry style project, and many young adults have more restrictions than I did with regard to appropriate content of their research.

In order to meet the technology requirements for this assignment, I used

Concept Map- example of my brainstorming process. I had never used webspiration before, so it is a little scattered, but so were my thoughts, so I left it the way it was.

Social Bookmark- I have a delicious page that you can link to from my wiki.

Electronic Communication Tool- I emailed a coworker to find out about her dads experiences during the Korean war. I also created a power point to go along with a childrens book I want to use for a program later.

Productivity Tool- I made a power point using my own digital pictures of my time living in Korea. I also used a scanner to make some of my oldest photos “digital”.