Widespread access to the Internet allows fast access to an overwhelming abundance of information. Students are adept at locating information online but they are not well educated on assessing its validity, and using it ethically. While much of the information on the web isn’t acceptable for use as evidence in an academic paper, there is plenty of accurate information in a number of different formats, as well as opportunities to create and contribute accurate information. As educators we must guide our students to navigate, to validate and to use the plethora of information at their finger tips.
A more detailed explanation of participatory culture and media literacy is explained in a white paper by Henry Jenkins director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. The increasing focus on information and media literacy is a small component of a larger shift in education to set new standards that better match the needs of our rapidly changing culture and economic environment. If your interested in learning more about these initiatives you can check out the work of NCREL, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, AASL, and ISTE.
Effective searching calls for specific navigation skills. Understanding differences among search engines is helpful as each returns results differently. Students need to use the Advanced Search features of the engines they select to use. Boolean searches can be easily put together now by putting search terms into the proper boxes (with all of the words, with the exact phrase, with at least one of the words, without the words.) Searches can be limited by domain (.com, .org, .gov, .edu) or by creation date. When looking at a page, students can start with the cached version so that the search terms are highlighted and their relevance can be quickly demonstrated. Once a good page is found, students can look for similar pages or pages which link to it.
Deconstructing URLS needs to become the first step of validating a page: domain, country, personal or K12. Point of view, bias, or authority can often be inferred through the URL. For example, ~ signals a personal page so the authority of the writer would need to be checked out.
But beyond the standard web searches, databases, books, and other proven sources valid information can be found and organized in the following formats:
Mashups
YouTube
Blogs and Forums
Podcasts
Wikis
RSS
Delicious
Moodle
How would you use each of these or how could you ask students to make or use them…and what new issues of copyright surround these formats.
Mashups
Combining information from different media formats and sources to create meaningful content and or new meanings. Student created mashups can demonstrate critical thinking skills.
On the Road with Google Maps is a mashup of Google maps technology and information from Jack Kerouac's On The Road. To create this students had to read the book, pick out important quotations and place them on the map. In creating this classroom artifact students are demonstrating their understanding of the novel. Using their knowledge of the book and representing it geographically further supports and deepens their understanding of the material.
Further examples:
The US Presidents Map
Malleable Map of Census Data
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload and share video content. A wide variety of content is available including historical news clips, documentaries, movie and television clips, college lectures, math lessons, how to videos as well as a host of truly bizarre user created content. YouTube is currently being heavily used in the election process and as a vehicle for social change. Recently Huckabee and Chuck Norris joined forces in a short video which is circulating rapidly through the Internet. Newsweek attributes some of Mike’s rise in Iowa to the Chuck as Huckster video.
Videos can be used as supplements in class, or you can ask students to find and evaluate them as homework, or the best idea is to create your own with students and post them as a video study guide, creating relevant classroom artifacts. Even if you only did one or two a year, over time with planning, you could have a whole year of chemistry videos. Using those videos for classroom demonstrations makes the material more relevant to your students.
Historical content exists on YouTube. For example, clips of the Nixon Kennedy TV debates are available as a great primary source. (Sometimes, however, you stumble across questionable content.) Another great historical example is a clip of Cronkite’s Report from Vietnam in 1968. Consider showing the Cronkite clip and ask students to relate it to our current war in Iraq. What is that sound in the background?
Blogs and Forums
Blogs and Forums can be good for finding opposing Points of View or even for getting feedback on your own points of view. The information here, contributed by individuals, provides an opportunity to help students practice validating information and sharing information. On some Blogs you’ll find valid information and hyperlinks to other sources some of which may be primary documents.
A Blog search for the years common book, The Glass Castle leads us to numerous points of view and reviews. As an assignment you could have students respond via argumentative essay to a review or POV that they disagree with. Of course this idea is not limited to The Glass Castle, Blogs and forums exist on just about any subject you can imagine.
One link in the search is an assignment given by a professor at Marshall University. Here the professor used a Blog as an online assignment for their students much like Karen and Elaine did last year with their sophomores. The teacher posted a prompt and the students responded. This is just another tool for getting students to write. Students are blogging and participating in forums all over the Internet on a daily basis, incorporating “their” technology into the classroom helps make learning more relevant to them, keeping them engaged in their learning.
Forums provide similar opportunities for finding and evaluating other points of view. In critical writing we are taught to anticipate and defend against counter arguments.
Podcasts
I-tunes and podcast directories provide access to information on a number of subjects. Basically podcasts are akin to radio broadcasts but portable media devices make them easily accessible. Many podcasts come from university professors who upload their course lectures online for their students and these educational podcasts are free. Students and faculty can easily record podcasts using their own laptops.
Podcasts are great for extra help, finding different points of view, and even helping kids with their writing. One possibility is to have students record themselves reading their rough draft or final draft. Then those recordings can be played in class or in one-on-one in extra help sessions. This exercise should help students develop better proof reading skills and strategies.
Podcasts are helpful tools for learning a language, finding extra help in any subject, and even for planning a lesson or lecture.
Wikis
Wikis are showing up all over the Internet. They were designed for collaboration. The most famous example is Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia comes up in the top of many google searches students are using it as a source of information daily. If you don’t know anything about a subject, often Wikipedia is a good starting point to get a baseline of knowledge and key concepts to help you conduct further research. As anyone can be an editor of Wikipedia, students need to develop evaluation skills. A good lesson is to assign students a topic to find in Wikipedia and compare the result against the same search in Britannica. If they find an error or omission, let them edit the entry – evaluating and contributing.
How do we manage and role model the flow of this information in our classrooms and give students the skills to manage it, also? Moodle provides good tools. Forums provide an area to post evaluation discussions of specific resources. RSS feeds of specific content or of specific news searches can be placed within a block on your course. For example, if you are doing a unit on global warming, you can construct a search in Google News which would feed articles from around the globe to your course. No need to construct a search over and over. A single search provides continuous content.
RSS feeds can be aggregated using Internet Explorer. When you find a feed you'd like to keep track of, look for a small orange RSS button. Clicking it will bring you to a new page where you can add it to your Internet Explorer feeds. Feeds can be accessed in IE by clicking on the yellow star on the toolbar.
Another good tool is del.icio.us, a free web resource for saving, describing, and tagging URL's. You could set up an account for your class, share the account and password information in Moodle. Every time a student found a relevant page, she could post it. She would learn how to tag relevantly and to write concise descriptions. Another great feature of del.icio.us is to see what other users have to say about the page or to click on other tags to find related pages. And since this is a free web tool, all the URLs are available no matter where you may be.
