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Flying under the radar…
January 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
One of the neat parts about my job is that I get to wander into classes when I get the chance to see what learners (teachers and students) are up to and how technology might help…I am sometimes pleasantly surprised as learners grow.
Yesterday I had the chance to wander into one of our Grade 7 1:1 laptop classes. The teacher was introducing a new research project where students would be looking at the contributions of aboriginal peoples to our culture. They began by discussing where and how students might find and, more importantly, assess information. In preparation, she had made a clear list on the whiteboard of the criteria students should use to assess web-based information. She answered two questions particularly well…
(paraphrasing…)
Q: What if the website doesn’t show an author?
A: Credible wesbites should indicate who wrote it.
Q: Is it OK to use wikipedia?
A: Wikipedia is a good place to start. Remember, it’s written by individuals like you and me, but my experiences are that it is pretty accurate and gives some links to other sources. We should always be looking for more than one source to assess credibilty.
Great Job! While these answers seem pretty logical to many of us, it is my experience that many/most learning communities are still struggling about issues with assessing on-line information. This teacher has obviously taken the time to read and become familiar with information assessment tools (authors, publishers, links to/from, update age, etc.). I especially liked how she didn’t immediately dismiss Wikipedia (many teachers do!). Like all on-line tools, it is only as valuable as it is credible. In this case, she related to her experiences but laid the responsibility of verifying the veracity of any information from many sources squarely on the learner.
Bravo Angela!
