Thursday, September 29, 2011

Reference Books? Nah...we'll just use Google. [Double Jounal Entry #6]

Quote: "Teaching must capitalize on students’ preferred literacy behaviors online. For example, since we know that students are speed-reading and skimming online, that they prefer clicking to scrolling, and that they will rarely read below the “fold” (Nielsen, 2002), we can teach quick ways to assess authority and credibility. Simple techniques, such as cutting back the URL, or pasting the author’s name or an asserted fact into a search engine, can validate authority or confirm bias."

Reaction: I agree with this quote very much. Kids never fully read anything longer than 3 paragraphs. I admit to skimming the article above! We live in a timed society. Anything that takes longer than a few minutes is viewed as a hassle. And that's not going to change. What can change is teaching kids what to look for when they "read." Also, validating sources is very important. These days anyone can make a website, make it look legit, and put whatever they want on there. Teachers always say Wikipedia is not a source, and I'm not saying it is, but it's a great place to start. It has all the info you need on one page and is broken up making it very easy to read. I think Wikipedia is great. You can go on there and if you learn something new, you can just search that fact to find other sources that back it up, rather than doing a broad search that leads you nowhere. I think that is a good quick way to teach how to check validity and creditability: search the one fact you found for other sources to back it up.

Related Source:

Sources:
Abilock, D. (2003, Nov. - Dec.). A Seven-power Lens on 21stCentury Literacy. Multimedia  
      Schools, 1, 30-35.

Philippines Outsourcing: Outsourcing, Data Entry, Back Office Operations. (n.d.). Philippines
      Outsourcing: BPO, Data Entry, Back Office Operations. Retrieved September 29, 2011, 
      from http://www.datasolutions.ph/Services/Internet-Research
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4 comments:

  1. Sean HarwellOctober 2, 2011 at 12:14 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Sean HarwellOctober 2, 2011 at 12:15 PM

    I agree with your response to an extent. I too am prone to skimming articles that are not very interesting but if they do seem to be interesting I do tend to read them all the way through. Wikipedia is a good tool but not a good source because anyone can write anything on the site. It is a good tool because most of the legitimate posts on the site have sources at the bottom of the page which you can go through and use those in things such as research paper.

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  3. P. PrideOctober 2, 2011 at 3:14 PM

    I liked your take on this article. I had a completely different view. Just goes to show how we interpet what we see and read. Good post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mary Jo SwigerOctober 4, 2011 at 10:34 AM

    Great plan to teach students how to validate sources!

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