Technology & Learning - May 2008 - (Page 25)

There remains a larger challenge for schools: how to develop a new generation of knowledgeable digital citizens who can operate in the unregulated online world. R emember typewritten card catalogs, multi-volume print encyclopedias, and dusty library shelves with outdated topics and material for classroom research? Today’s students don’t. Why resort to such antiquated methods when almost any subject will be found on Wikipedia or by googling it? Educators know that answer. Many students cannot discriminate between posts that are accurate and attributable and those that are undocumented and misleading. This fact leads teachers to limit online research to subscription services like netTrekker or Web directories like Awesome Library. While sites like these certainly play an important role in the classroom, there remains a larger challenge for schools: how to develop a new generation of knowledgeable digital citizens who can operate in the unregulated online world. Call it information literacy, media literacy, or network literacy, the ability to access, evaluate, synthesize, and build upon information and media are crucial skills. The following suggestions can help give your students the basic skills to be both technologyproficient and info-savvy. adept at search strategies. Left to their own devices, students will depend on natural language to search rather than analyze keywords that would be more effective. They also tend to rely entirely on a single search tool such as Yahoo or Google for obtaining information. Challenge students to search using a variety of strategies and tools (see “21st-Century Literary Terms and Definitions,” this page) and report back on the most and least effective search approaches. As students prepare for a major research project, require them to include a number of keywords and search options they used along with their traditional, footnoted attributions. 21st-Century Literacy Terms and Definitions Information Literacy Being able to recognize when information is needed and to have the ability to locate, evaluate, and to use effectively the needed information. Source: American Library Association Media Literacy The process of analyzing, accessing, managing, integrating, evaluation, and creating information in a variety of forms and media. Source: Partnership for 21st Century Skills Get meta about it Much attention is paid to inaccuracies found in the Wikipedia Web site and other collaboratively created online sources, prompting certain educational organizations to ban their use for research. Why not treat the site itself as a subject of study? Recent analysis reports Wikipedia’s accuracy to be comparable to that of Britannica’s and Encarta’s. Have students do their own accuracy analysis as they explore a topic with which they are particularly knowledgeable—their home community, for example, or a favorite sport or hobby. Do they find any misleading, inaccurate, or missing information in Wikipedia? How does it compare to overviews they find elsewhere? ICT Literacy (also known as Digital Literacy) Using digital technology, communication tools, and networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge economy. Source: Partnership for 21st Century Skills Network Literacy Linking to what other people have written and inviting comments from others; understanding writing as a social, collaborative process; and learning how to write with an awareness that anyone may read it. Adapted from Jill Walker’s blog, jilltxt.net Teach them to search Researchers at the British Library recently confirmed what most teachers understand: Young people, while perfectly comfortable using computers and the Internet, are not naturally Technology & Learning May 2008 | 25 http://jilltxt.net

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Technology & Learning - May 2008 Contents New@techlearning.com Editor’s Desk News and Trends E-Learning Gets Real Cover Story: Make Students Info Literate School CIO Product Guide Reviews Best of the Blogs What’s New LOY Profile Series

Technology & Learning - May 2008

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