The Big Six

For the second weeks activities we were given a few different frameworks. These included T pack, Learning Engagement Theory and the Big Six as well as the frameworks that we have already looked at such as DoL and Productive Pedagogy. The framework that I have decided to focus on is The Big Six and this is because I think it has a practical use in every class at school as well as being useful to higher education students and even people in the workforce.

This framework will work well because it brings the natural talents of the students and the information that you are trying to teach and bring them together. It was developed by Mike Eisenberg and Bob Berkowitz. Together they came up with a framework that took the processes that every day people use subconsciously and refine it to be a great way of finding information. It can help with all types of work but is really handy when it comes to problem solving. The Big Six is, at the moment, the most commonly used framework by students and their teachers in schools.

A lot of different professionals in the field of education have been saying for a long time now that we need to integrate the use of ICT's and importantly computers, with what all teachers are teaching their students instead of just the separate computer classes (Berkowitz, B,. Eisenberg, M,. Johnson, D,. 2010). It would take all of the teachers in the school communicating with each other to get this to happen but with The Big Six framework it forces the teachers to bring ICT's into the classroom. The Big Six has 6 different stages. These 6 stages take the students through a full process that allows them to explore different information and different ways of gathering that information.

The six stages
1 Task Definition. At this stage the students are communicating with each other, the teachers and any other professionals that they are able to connect with (maybe using technology) to get a focus question or pick or topic. This is a question that will help them answer the problem that they have at that time. Once this is done they will start to define what the topic or question will incorporate.

2 Information Seeking Strategies. Instead of just going out and seeking the information straight away, this step gets the students to take a look at what resources they have available to them to find information. They may have a computer with the inter or intranet with messenger and skype to communicate with professionals. They may have mobile phones to call people with, use wiki's to communicate idea's with other people who are doing a topic that may link with theirs or they may have a voice recorder to record a conversation that they have with a professional face to face.

3 Location and Access. They now have a focus topic or question and they know all of the equipment that they have at their disposal to find out the information that they are seeking. This level is about now finding the sources that they are going to get the information from. These sources can be people, face to face or via phone or skype, Internet sites, or books.

4 Use Of Information. Now that they have their sources, they can finally gather their information. This is the first and only stage in which the students will gather information.

5 Synthesis. In this stage the students will put all of their information together and show it in a variety of ways. This will allow the students to be able to see which way their information is better put forward or displayed.

6 Evaluation. Now that they have chosen the best way to show their information they must go back over everything that they have done and see whether or not it is all related back to the topic or focus question that they negotiated with the teacher in the first stage.

No other framework goes directly into this much information. The students would respond well to it as they have everything set out for them and all that they have to do is gather the information. It would also be handy for the teacher because it would be easy to gauge what each individual student is up to and which students need teacher input. The Big Six puts out a logical framework that I will be able to use easily to have a look and different tools that can be used on the Internet.

Berkowitz, B,. Eisenberg, M,. Johnson, D,. (2010) Information, communications and Technology (ICT) Skills Curriculum Based on the Big Six Skills Approach to Information Problem Solving. Viewed July 21, from http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/file.php/4033/LMC_Big6-ICT_Curriculum_LMC_MayJune2010.pdf