reading questions for EDCI 5825

Information literacy is an important skill for today’s student to have when navigating the Internet. To be information literate, a student must critically evaluate a source they find on the Internet. They must consider who has written the information on a website and what the author's purpose was in creating the website. One clue is to look at the domain name of a website – if it ends in .edu, it is a university website. A .com website is a commercial website. Students must also understand if the website’s purpose is objectivity or advocacy. Are they presenting information in a balanced, factual manner? Or is the source trying to convince you that their ideas are right and merely stating opinions? Although looking at the domain name is can be useful, students should be cautioned that not all education websites are factual or truthful. In Empowering Students with Technology, Alan November cites the example of a website by a Northwestern University professor that denied that the Holocaust happened and the concentration camps were merely medical clinics. The website was a personal website using a Northwestern University domain, but the university did not endorse his views (November, 2010). A student needs to be given the skills to evaluate a website with a critical eye, always doubting the validity of the information unless proven otherwise. Not everything on the Internet is invalid, but since anyone can access the Internet and create their own webpage, a student has to be more cautious than if they were using a book source.

Students and teachers can use the MAP perspective to thoughtfully evaluate a website. The first part is meta-web information. Students can look at a website’s links to see what other websites it is linked to. They can also learn to decode a web address to evaluate if it is a personal webpage, a company’s website, and more. The second part is seeing who the authors of the information are. Often an author is credited at the bottom of webpage. They may even include their contact information if a student wishes to seek clarification. Also seeing if the website is a personal site, a corporate site, or a university site gives a clue to who the author was and what their biases may be. The last part is purpose. You must try to discern the author’s purpose through a close reading of the information. Wikipedia can be a useful resource for students because it usually contains up-to-date information on almost any topic. However, since anyone can edit the site, you should tread carefully when using Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, you can see who has edited the page and what has been edited, so it is easy to see if the information has been tampered with (Richardson 2010).

Internet workshops, Webquests, Internet projects, and Internet inquiries all utilize the power of the Internet to help students access information and use the Internet to learn. They are similar that students need to seek out information to solve a problem or find answers. It is student-centered learning and while the teacher can direct it, the students are ultimately controlling their learning. It can be collaborative, like Internet projects, where students connect to other classrooms around the world to learn together. Other tools have the student work independently to find answers; the Internet inquiry has students identify a question and then using the Internet, they pursue the answer by themselves. The Internet workshops have a student look at a website that a teacher has bookmarked and then they answer questions about it by themselves. However, then they share their answers with the class so it is collaborative in that sense. The teachers also have varying amounts of control over the different Internet learning resources. With a Webquest, a lesson is planned by the teacher and then the student does the work via the Internet. Internet inquiry gives the student more autonomy to pursue their own interests without the teacher dictating what they are learning. The teacher does ensure what the students are viewing is appropriate, but there are different amounts of control on each activity.

Thanks for reading!

References

November, A. (2010). Empowering students with technology. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.