ABSTRACT

Lindsey, Marti (2000) A Constructivist Study of Developing Curriculum to Teach Internet Information Literacy to Navajo High School Students

    This thesis reports the results of a school year long study, 1999-2000 that examines the development of a curriculum for teaching Navajo/Dine’ high school students Internet information literacy. Lessons were constructed through observation of student responses and formal discussions with teachers over the course of the project.
    There are three phases of the study. The initial phase identifies effective content and delivery modalities. I established eight principles for teaching Navajo students. These are: culturally relevant content, wholistic learning, choice in projects, visual learning, personal relationships between teachers and students, developing feelings of competence, teaching essential information to functioning in dominant society and giving opportunities to work cooperatively.
    The second phase implements the findings of the first. I developed eight mini-lessons: Thinking about the assignment, Navigation and browsing on the Internet, Exploring with the Internet, Note taking and collecting information, Evaluating resources, Preparing to present, Reference lists, and Evaluating research skills.
     A student self-assessment was administered to participating students during the third phase. The final report of the study indicates students who participated in three sets of Internet information literacy lessons expressed more confidence in their abilities to use the Internet in their class work than those who had taken one set of lessons.
Thesis
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