When I was a junior in high school, I had to write a research paper on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for my American Literature class. This was 1997. My teacher took us to our school's one computer lab (we had 2400 students and one computer lab with 30 computers) and taught us how to use the search engines to locate resources for our research papers. At the time, there was so much less information available on the internet than there is today. I remember that in addition to an encyclopedia entry or two, almost all of my classmates and I ended up using another high school student's paper that had been posted to a website as a source for our own research papers. That student's paper was not a reliable source of information, and, to be honest, it was not even as good as a paper anyone in my class could have written. But it was online, and we believed that, as a result, it was authentic, reliable, good. How wrong we were!
Fast forward to today. Now I am the English teacher and I am taking my students to the library to research their own papers for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My students immediately begin googling the keywords: "huck finn racist" or "huck finn jim's role" and clicking on the first results generated by the search engine. Rather than struggling to find information, my students are overwhelmed by the amount of information generated; google "huck finn racist" today and you'll find upwards of 57,000 results. Are all 57,000 of those sources sound, reliable sources, though? Of course they're not. I could write a website today claiming that Huck had actually been raised by wolves and that Jim was not a former slave but was, instead, the King of England. Obviously, simply being published on the internet does not make something true. But how do we convince students (and, at times, the general public) that they need to be savvy and digitally literate?
It is no longer my job to show my students how to access information; instead, it is my responsibility to teach my students how to determine which information is reliable and true. How do I go about teaching them? (And, while we're at it, I should probably include my grandma, my parents, and all anti-vaxxers in this lesson.) I need to show them the qualities of a reliable website, demonstrate to them the dangers of digital illiteracy. It's my opinion that the most simple yet effective approach is the one provided by the United Nations. This approach relies on five criteria to evaluate a web resource: accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage.
While researching digital literacy for this assignment, I discovered several sites that seemed particularly useful for teaching the importance of evaluating a website before depending on its information. The Center for Media Literacy seeks to empower internet users to differentiate between a reliable and unreliable site. One of the resources that seemed particularly relevant for today's high school students is MediaSmarts, a Canadian media literacy site. What I find most useful on MediaSmarts is the section on media and digital issues that deals with current topics like body image and cyberbullying. The site is clean and easy to navigate. It seems appealing to teenagers without being condescending or obnoxious.
When I teach my students about digital literacy, I often team up with our school's librarian. Together we develop a research assignment that requires students to find reliable information. We direct students toward databases and sites that are reputable (we will often use Galileo), and demonstrate to them the ways that people can be exploited when they do not understand the necessity of being a shrewd web user. Before being allowed to use a particular web source, the student must verify (using the UN's criteria) the authenticity of the information collected.
With modeling, consistency, and vigilance, we can teach our students to be digitally literate and to exercise good judgment when collecting web resources.
How do you ensure that your students are digitally literate?
Fast forward to today. Now I am the English teacher and I am taking my students to the library to research their own papers for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My students immediately begin googling the keywords: "huck finn racist" or "huck finn jim's role" and clicking on the first results generated by the search engine. Rather than struggling to find information, my students are overwhelmed by the amount of information generated; google "huck finn racist" today and you'll find upwards of 57,000 results. Are all 57,000 of those sources sound, reliable sources, though? Of course they're not. I could write a website today claiming that Huck had actually been raised by wolves and that Jim was not a former slave but was, instead, the King of England. Obviously, simply being published on the internet does not make something true. But how do we convince students (and, at times, the general public) that they need to be savvy and digitally literate?
It is no longer my job to show my students how to access information; instead, it is my responsibility to teach my students how to determine which information is reliable and true. How do I go about teaching them? (And, while we're at it, I should probably include my grandma, my parents, and all anti-vaxxers in this lesson.) I need to show them the qualities of a reliable website, demonstrate to them the dangers of digital illiteracy. It's my opinion that the most simple yet effective approach is the one provided by the United Nations. This approach relies on five criteria to evaluate a web resource: accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage.
The UN's criteria for web evaluation.
While researching digital literacy for this assignment, I discovered several sites that seemed particularly useful for teaching the importance of evaluating a website before depending on its information. The Center for Media Literacy seeks to empower internet users to differentiate between a reliable and unreliable site. One of the resources that seemed particularly relevant for today's high school students is MediaSmarts, a Canadian media literacy site. What I find most useful on MediaSmarts is the section on media and digital issues that deals with current topics like body image and cyberbullying. The site is clean and easy to navigate. It seems appealing to teenagers without being condescending or obnoxious.
When I teach my students about digital literacy, I often team up with our school's librarian. Together we develop a research assignment that requires students to find reliable information. We direct students toward databases and sites that are reputable (we will often use Galileo), and demonstrate to them the ways that people can be exploited when they do not understand the necessity of being a shrewd web user. Before being allowed to use a particular web source, the student must verify (using the UN's criteria) the authenticity of the information collected.
With modeling, consistency, and vigilance, we can teach our students to be digitally literate and to exercise good judgment when collecting web resources.
How do you ensure that your students are digitally literate?
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