By the time I graduated from high school in 1992, I had handed in many term papers that I had typed on my fancy electric typewriter with citations to a number of library books. I headed off to college where every student received a brand, spanking new Apple Macintosh Classic II:
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It was portable! It had a word processor! And a printer!
My senior year of college, I was having some difficulty finding additional texts for my philosophy independent study on democracy and education, so I visited my advisor. After we discussed the resources I had reviewed and what I was looking for, he queried, “Have you considered looking on the internet?” I had not.
Times. Have. Changed.
Today, many of our students are relying on social media, not academic journals and books full of critical theories (Stevenson, 2016). As the Stanford History Education Group notes in its 2016 report, “[o]ur ‘digital natives’ may be able to flit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped” (p. 4). Valenza (2016) further issues a cry for action: “I see a serious need for librarians to build a few seaworthy arks from the news media flood to aid students in discerning credibility, reliability, and bias in context of their information needs and the context of the text itself” (para. 12). In an episode of their interesting podcast, The Liturgists, Michael Gungor (2017) and his guests offer an alternative analogy when they discuss the need for people to develop a healthy media diet and distinguish healthy information calories from unhealthy ones.
The Association of College & Research Libraries has recognized the critical need for college and university students to avoid the flood or improve their diets by developing skills within six frames:
- Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
- Information Creation as a Process
- Information Has Value
- Research as Inquiry
- Scholarship as Conversation
- Searching as Strategic Exploration (ACRL, 2016)
While targeted at higher education, this document provides key guidance about where our students need to be, knowledge-wise, when they enter college campuses (physically or, in these COVID times, virtually). The Partnership for 21st Century Learning, a project of Battelle for Kids, has issued a similar framework for younger students (Battelle for Kids, 2019a, 2019b) with helpful infographics and publications.
I hear this call. Over the past year, I have been curating
resources in preparation for beginning media/news/digital literacy training
with my middle school students. I am
currently working on a website with an annotated bibliography of helpful
resources. Stay tuned – I’ll share a
link here once I have published it.
In the meantime, here are three of my favorite online resources. Please share yours in the comments!
- Common Sense
Education. (n.d.). https://www.commonsense.org/education/
Visit Common Sense Media’s education resource gateway for lessons on digital citizenship and reviews of educational technology resources. Sign up for their weekly newsletter or join the Facebook group to keep up with developments in digital citizenship and media literacy. The website also offers resources in Spanish. - News Literacy Project. (n.d.). https://newslit.org/educators/
Use NLP’s Checkology to create lessons on mastering news literacy skills. Sign up for The Sift, a weekly newsletter with suggestions for incorporating media and news literacy into your classroom. - Skeptoid. (n.d.).
Teachers toolkit. https://skeptoid.com/teachers
This engaging science-based podcast focuses on debunking commonly held misperceptions, myths, and urban legends. The creators developed a toolkit for teachers who want to use ad-free podcast episodes in their classrooms. You can easily create a “playlist” of episodes to save and share with students.
References
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education [PDF]. American Library Association. http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/infolit/framework.pdf
Gungor, M. (Executive Producer). (2017, March 7). Fake news & media literacy [Audio podcast episode]. In The liturgists. https://theliturgists.com/podcast/2017/3/7/fake-news-media-literacy
Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (2019a). Framework for 21st century learning. Battelle for Kids. http://static.battelleforkids.org/documents/p21/P21_Framework_Brief.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (2019b). Framework for 21st century learning definitions. Battelle for Kids. http://static.battelleforkids.org/documents/p21/P21_Framework_DefinitionsBFK.pdf
Stanford
History Education Group. (2016, November 22). Evaluating information: The
cornerstone of civic online reasoning [PDF]. https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:fv751yt5934/SHEG%20Evaluating%20Information%20Online.pdf
Stevenson,
S. (2016, November 18). Information literacy lessons crucial in a post-truth
world. Knowledge Quest. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/information-literacy-lessons-crucial-post-truth-world/
Valenza,
J. (2016, November 26). Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy
toolkit for a “post-truth” world. School Library Journal. http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/11/26/truth-truthiness-triangulation-and-the-librarian-way-a-news-literacy-toolkit-for-a-post-truth-world/
6 comments:
Yes, times have changed. I remember asking a college professor how to attach a document to an email. I felt like an idiot for not knowing. I had to make sure that all the articles I needed for papers were printed in the library before I left for the day. I want to say, "these kids today don't know how easy they have it." But, I know that statement isn't true. Yes, they have access to more information in on their personal devices, but they have to sift through that information to find validity and reliability. I knew the articles that I took home with me from the library were valid and reliable. Some students may never step foot in the actual library, but they still need the services the library provides. We need to start young teaching children these skills. Just because they have access to the technology, does not mean they know how to use it appropriately and/or effectively.
Stacey Templin
I completely agree, Stacey. The widespread availability of information through the internet has affected not only the availability of new forms of media like websites, social media, and blogs but it has also aided the proliferation of information in traditional forms of media like books, magazines, newspapers, and journals, even as some of those have shifted to online formats.
The obstacles to entry for someone who wants to write a book are so much lower nowadays, for example. Back when we were in elementary, middle, high school, and college, if we needed information, distinguishing good information from bad was many degrees easier. Avoid The Enquirer; use the local newspaper. Mad Magazine is satire; National Geographic is sound. Get your peer-reviewed journal article off the shelf of via ILL. Check the book off the shelf from the public library or buy it at the bookstore, and odds are someone has vetted it. Sure, you could get some pseudo-science (anyone else remember Chariots of the Gods - fun book!) but you are far more likely to find that now when just about anyone who wants to proclaim themselves the science or health guru du jour can self-publish a book and sell it on Amazon!
I do NOT believe that all of this is bad - expanding everyone's access to real information has some solid benefits - but our job as librarians in protecting people's right to KNOW (not believe or assume or blindly agree with) information becomes increasingly more difficult as the gatekeepers of veracity and reliability have been stormed by the invading forces of the digital revolution! Media/news/information literacy is vastly more important now!
I remember back in 1992 I was still in college. In my high school, we had a few computers for students taking data processing. I could never fit that course in my schedule. I did take typing in 9th grade with electronic typewriters. I had moved up from middle school where I typed on manual typwriters. The past--I am thankful for the advance in our technology!
I did not learn about credibilty of sources until my first graduate degree. This was a daunting task to accomplish because no professor had required me to do it in four years. Once I learned it, I taught it. When you learn that it is imperative to establish credibility, you want to do it all the time. This is what I drive home to our young learners.
My middle schoolers believe everything they see on social media and the Internet. If it appears on the Internet, they are fully convinced that it is real. They have no clue where the information derives, they just believe it. One day I asked a student what that little man jumping up with his hand stretched on her Nike sneakers. She said she did not know. Another student stepped in and said it was Michael Jordan. Every student in my school is issued a computer everyday. Did she go on the Internet (that same place where they think everything is true) to search for credible information to corroborate what the other young learner said about the little man on her sneakers? Absolutely not! She just believed it.
I think you are making a wonderful start with your middle school students. Their minds are so impressionable. That coupled with the plethora of fake news and such, they have so much information to sift through. Once you teach them the way to find evidence, that will be ingrained in them to want to do it every time.
I completely agree with what you wrote about students needing a strong understanding of reliable sources. Sources like Facebook and Twitter are just as unreliable as Wikipedia in most cases.
Last year, I had a bright student question me about the rule that the teacher dismisses the class rather than the bell. He had spent time forming an argument for his case that when the bell rings, he should be able to get up and leave class. His strongest point of his argument was a quote he found from an online source titled "Cool Facts" that stated teachers should not hold their classes beyond the bell. Though I was teaching math, we had an excellent discussion about reliable sources that day. In middle school, the students have much difficulty processing the idea that random searches on the internet may bring them to support for their ideas or the conclusion they're looking for, but those searches have no validity in an academic setting.
I think it does not matter what subject we teach, when we see a "teachable moment" we have got to take it because that moment might not come again. Then, what we end up with are misinformed young adults who misinform other young adults. My middle school students think the Internet is the gospel. I agree that our middle school students are the worst when it comes to checking sources. They believe everything they see and spread it around to others. They try to spread it to me too and I just look at them. I know that in the 80s we I did not have all this technology, but I was not so gullible. I had my antennas up all the time. I asked a lot of questions and it took me a while to decide on things. That behavior has trickled into my adult life. Therefore, I truly believe that we have to get in the habit to give our young learners practice exercises so that when they transition into adulthood, they will have trained minds that will continue to take the correct action in finding and accepting reliable sources. I am just thinkig that I can present a 5 minute read once a day and then my students will get in the habit of using the skills when they see and hear information on their own or with friends and family. They will then become the authority on whether the information, source, and specific content is either real or fake.
Princess Justyce, I, too, took typing on electric typewriters! My class spanned a semester in the 8th grade. It was - hands down - the most useful class I have ever taken! My students ask me, "Ms. Neal, how do you type so fast???" and I tell them it's all thanks to Ms. Spear and 8th grade typing!
And I love the example you gave, Kristen, about using the teachable moments!
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