Database Lesson Plan Essay
William Warrick
EDIT 711
Teaching With Technology I: Telecommunications and Databases
Priscilla Norton/Debra Sprague
May 6, 1998

Information is power
Francis Bacon

What we need today is not more power,
but rather the power to manage the information that we have.
Norton/Wiburg

We are living in an age where the currency and product of much of what we do is information. The information explosion that we must face is staggering in its proportions. Not only is the amount of information a cause for concern among educators, but the means to access and use that information is changing as well. Rather than focus our attention on the futile task of keeping up with the amount of information, shouldn't our goal be to give our students the skills with which they can access and manipulate the data? This lesson plan is designed to explore the on-line database as a means of finding and gathering meaningful data and to enhance the communication skills our students will need to be successful lifelong learners.

In the initial phase of the lesson, the students were given the task of choosing companies that traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange, locating information about those companies and making investment decisions based on the information they could obtain. Rather than simply giving the students that information, it is necessary to provide the tools they need to search for the data on which to base their plans. These search skills are readily transferable to all other curricular areas and will form the basis of an improved ability to deal with the information 'overload'. Students are given the opportunity to design a strategy for searching based on criteria that is at first teacher directed and then augmented and extended by group deliberation.

Once the companies have been decided upon and investments made, the students are then instructed to track the daily performance of their stocks using an on-line database. (www.nasdaq.com).This gave the students the opportunity to experience and exploit one of the unique characteristics of the Internet - its currency. The ability to immediately distribute information world-wide allows us to stay up-to-the-minute on the information that we need. In dealing with financial matters, this immediate information is critical. Fluctuations in the stock market minute-by-minute can have a profound impact on investment strategies. The use of an on-line database allows students to literally witness those fluctuations as they occur and analyze the effects on their investments. Utilizing the Internet to stay abreast of ever-changing events is vital in almost all areas of learning.

Accessing the Nasdaq web site, the students are presented with a large amount and wide variety of information. Given the structure of the lesson plan and the goals for investing set forth by the instructor, it is up to the students to decide on the types of information that will be valuable to them. One of the most discouraging aspects of using the Internet, or a database, is the overabundance of information that is presented. However, it is up to educators to give the students the skills needed to evaluate the information as to its relevance and quality. Norton & Wiburg, in Teaching with Technology, write, "...effective sorters must be able to determine which parts of the remaining information are important and which parts are superfluous. In a world producing information faster than it can be sorted, deciding what not to attend to becomes as important as deciding what to attend to."

Simply being able to find and collect information is not enough. The students must synthesize the information that they have collected and communicate that information in a meaningful way. Students today must have the ability to take information and create effective presentations of that information. Graphical representations of numerical data is superior to tables because of what Donald Norman calls the "Perceptual Principal". In Things That Make Us Smart, he writes, "Perceptual and spatial representations are more natural and therefore to be preferred over nonperceptual, nonspatial representations..." Encouraging students to use the spreadsheet graphing functions gives them the tools by which they can effectively relate to others their experiences in working with the stock market. Students are able to demonstrate the performance of various stocks, as well as the resulting profits and losses in a way that is easily understood.

In preparing today's students for the future, schools must recognize that the model of teacher-as-infomation-provider will not be adequate. There is simply too much information to impart in the time allowed, and the volume is growing every day. In order to allow our students to become independent, life-long learners we must move beyond the traditional concept of literacy and provide them with what Paul Gilster calls Digital Literacy. In his book Digital Literacy, he defines this as "...the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide variety of sources when it is presented via computers." Today's literate student is one who possesses the skills needed to search for information efficiently; evaluate the information to sort between the valuable and the irrelevant; create a product using the information and; finally, communicate that information in a way that is understandable and meaningful.

 

 

Bibliography

Gilster, P. (1997). Digital Literacy. NY: John Wiley & Sons

Norman, D. (1993). Things That Make Us Smart. Reading, MA: Patrick

Norton, P. & Wiburg, K. (1998). Teaching with Technology. NY: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.