Vicki Davis, that Cool Cat Teacher, wrote a poignant, and classic, blog post yesterday about her son’s experience researching the 9/11 terrorist attack.
When my son brought out his report on 9/11 facts, I was again reminded of how important it is to teach digital literacy.
You see, when he typed 9/11 facts — he found a conspiracy theory website(s) and came out of it thinking someone had bombed the building.
Yes, he is in seventh grade, and Yes, I’ve talked so much with him about verifying sources, however, kids so often think if it is “on” Google that it is right.
This is a crucial problem for us in education, equipping our students with the skills to critically evaluate the information that they encounter. It is probably the most frequent complaint that I hear from educators about the Internet, as they try to teach that which their students must learn.
So let me see if I can disappoint some people and come at this from an entirely different direction. What if I suggested that it was our fault.
We teach from textbooks, from reference books, from journals, online databases, and from our own educated expertise. It’s part of our arsenal, as teachers, to help us instill confidence in the sources of that which we are teaching. I’m not saying that textbooks, reference books, and commercial databases are bad, and that we shouldn’t use them. They are enormously valuable. But we’re missing something that’s very important when we rely so exclusively on carefully packaged content and then lament that our students and children rely so readily on Google.
We have to practice what we preach, and we have to practice it out loud!
At the same time that we continue to use our textbooks (or what ever they evolve into), reference works, databases, and our own expertise, we should also bring in, at every opportunity, content and resources that we have found, evaluated, processed, and prepared for teaching and learning, and that we should include conversations about how we found it, evaluated, and processed it. If the are seeing us, every day, asking the questions that are core to being literate today, then perhaps they will not only develop the skills of critical evaluation, but also the habits.
2¢ Worth!
Image Citation:
Bargmann, Monika. “Googling.” Library Mistress’ Photostream. 31 Jan 2006. 12 Sep 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/library_mistress/93567838/>.
OH OH OH! I forgot the most important thing to say about this post. This is a great topic for a teacher education class.
Asking a seventh grader to “research” 9/11 is a stupid inappropriate and irresponsible assignment. My guess is that the curricular objective was something like writing a 5-paragraph essay or making X PowerPoint slides and had little to do with 9/11.
This is a terrible assignment for the following reasons:
1) Smart accomplished expert adults don’t have all of the “facts” about 9/11. Remember how many Americans think that Saddam Hussein was responsible?
2) I am sure that the 7th graders weren’t urged to read The 9/11 Commission Report. That doesn’t fit into the 37 minute computer-lab period AND it wasn’t produced by a textbook company.
3) If you ask children to answer questions too big for them to get their heads around, they will respond with politically correct pablum or not at all. The brilliant educators of Reggio Emilia teach us that instead of asking a 3 year-old “How would you change the world for the better?” Instead, it’s better to ask toddlers, “Can you build a park for the birds who come to visit our school?” THAT THEY CAN COMPREHEND or at least understand their understanding. They can observe, measure, build, experiment, debug, enhance and a host of other verbs in pursuit of solving a mind-size problem.
I wish I had a nickel for every conference I’ve attended where a half-dozen of the school’s “winners” tell the audience how they would improve education. The answers almost always include, better salad dressing and less homework. The question is too big for many of us, how can a kid answer it?
4) The topic is politically charged and kids will be reluctant to say anything judged to be non-PC for fear of embarrassment or sanction.
5) We should stop using the term research in school when we mean, write a “report.” Research is what people do when they immerse themselves in a community, have an awareness of the work that preceded them and seek to find truth or quest a thirst for knowledge.
In too many schools, research means writing something you don’t care about in your own words. Don’t forget the nice cover!
You have no idea what the assignment was about. It was actually an excellent assignment from an excellent teacher.
It is easy to do the typical “attack the assignment” approach when in reality David’s point and my point should be heard.
Students should be literate. They should understand how to research the validity of sources and check multiple sources.
I think this is why more teachers don’t blog. When we are transparent and write about our struggles and questions, people who don’t understand them or their context come out of the woodwork and draw conclusions totally unrelated to the topic at hand.
We are sorely lacking in digital citizenship skills in our children. They are not as digitally literate as they need to be.
Criticize my school and its writing program all you want my son is in the top 3% of the country in his writing skills (and her students rarely score below the 90th percentile on writing)– writing is a way of life here at our school and he has 2-3 writing assignments a week — yes they may be typed or hand written, no they don’t have a nice cover.
I think that perhaps if someone wants to know how to improve writing abilities this teacher should be studied not ridiculed out of context.
And the point is we need digital literacy and I believe digital citizenship to be integrated into our curriculum at every grade level.
I asked the teacher. The assignment was to research several facts from verifiable news sources about 9/11 to facilitate a class discussion. It was not an all encompassing assignment but rather one intended to give the students some knowledge prior to a discussion and view of a video. It was to include at least three facts from at least two different sources of information with the student restating in their own words what they found… the sources were to be attached.
I’m sure you’ll find many reasons this isn’t a good assignment, however, having students have some prior knowledge about a topic is a “frontloading” strategy that I often use.
David,
Please take a stand. Why equivocate on the quality and value of textbooks? What was the last textbook you read for fun?
Textbooks are by definition teacher-proof. They are written by anonymous committees, rarely people with sufficient expertise on a subject. The sequence is arbitrary and the focus is often biased. Humanities subjects tend to be told from the perspective of white males. Even when actual literature is included, it’s often and sliced to dice into a few pages. You’re never allowed to read anything in depth without being interrupted by some inauthentic assessment task. Depth is impossible since textbooks (K-12 at least) tend to be survey texts. Countless reports have documented how the popular science texts are riddled with errors.
Textbooks are bowdlerized and sanitized so that they may meet with the approval of the nut-jobs who serve on the Texas textbook adoption committee. This self-censorship ultimately leads to half-truths and misconceptions.
US textbooks are enormously expensive and heavy.
“Looking stuff up” online isn’t perfect either. I’m a big fan of books and other primary sources as well.
I’ve developed a fantastic new information literacy challenge that I’m going to launch for the first time in Shanghai this weekend. It’s the type of real-world problem that gets more curious the more information you have.
PLEASE do not think that I do not believe that children are capable of research. They absolutely are. Kids are scientists from their infancy. The research questions need to be reasonable though. Rabindranath Tagore and others have demonstrated how even toddlers can conduct research mirroring the process of adult researchers or doctoral students.
Vicki,
You are correct that I didn’t have the specific assignment and may have generalized based on similar experiences in the absence of critical details.
However, I stand by the position that the prompt was bound to stir up trouble. I offered innovative pedagogical practices from India and Italy based on the development of children as a way of trying to initiate a serious discussion about the sorts of problem solving prompts with the potential to lead to the richest learning experiences. It’s not teacher bashing to suggest that there is more we might learn about teaching.
Of course everyone should use multiple sources. The reason this is such a problem online is that it has rarely been done offline.
it’s great that your son has terrific teachers. However, writing 2-3 assignments per week makes it even more difficult to adequately address complex issues like “9/11.” Test scores are unrelated to this topic.
Can you think of any scenarios when the conspiracy theory or less official perspective turns out to be accurate?
Would you like to tell us what the actual assignment was? What were the educational objectives? What materials and context were provided for the class?
Every lesson plan can be improved as can every lesson. It would be unprofessional of me to share the full assignment without permission from the teacher.
I assign controversial things all of the time for my students to research and discuss in the hopes that I can teach them that there are multiple perspectives, and indeed in the class discussion that ensued from the student work (I can say that the purpose was to give the students prior information before discussing 9/11 and its impact on the world.) covered many perspectives.
The main point is not in this assignment the point is that digital literacy is lacking in schools — not just in mine or my home — as David said, it is something teachers are seeing everywhere. It is a problem. We need to look at it and determine methods to ensure that students understand how to look at multiple sources and verify websites for more than just whether they look real.
I’ve been very open about this problem and used myself as an example. I will continue to be transparent although most teachers will balk at pointing out problems when others are so eager to lambaste them.
This is an important issue to discuss but the intent was to focus on the fact that students are vastly digitally illiterate.
Vicki, does your son go to a private school or a public school, the latter which is obviously accountable to, and should be transparent to, the public? I’m curious why you’re hesitant to share the lesson. Is it secret? I’m not bashing here, just genuinely curious why you think it’s ‘unprofessional’ to share someone’s lesson plan which, in a public school, would be considered ‘work for hire’ and belongs to the school absent some intellectual property agreement that states otherwise.
Kudos to you, your son, and his teachers for preparing a great writer. It’s SO, SO important…
I had an “ah haa” moment reading this post. I do try to explain to the students (K-8), as appropriate, in computer class that I am continuously researching new projects online. I don’t often include background on how I perform my research in preparation for a project. I will have to remember this. There is value in sharing how I went about my research and how I evaluated what I was looking at. Thanks!
CNN (a reputable news source) ran a story today about the mysterious jet seen flying over the White House during the attacks of 9-11-01. White House correspondent John King narrated the report.
Analysts speculate that the jet was a secret air force command plane, but the response from the FAA, Pentago and White House is, “no comment.”
What would happen if a student decided to include speculation about the mystery jet for their school 9/11 assignment?
Gary –
The point is that my son shouldn’t have taken the first site he came to, which I admit he did. The site (if you had gone there) had no links to original sources of information that I saw and no entity that wrote it.
CNN is a source of information that can be verified and if he were to report that CNN talked about a mystery jet, of course that would be fine.
I think to many respondents to this question are linking their emotions of 9/11 and probably the Bush Administration with the fact that I am saying that students need to be taught and continually instructed on finding multiple sources and verifying sources.
I think that CNN has veracity, I think that the first site he came to did not. We could probably debate my conclusions forever. Let’s keep the focus on digital literacy.
I do not advocate mind control or self imposition of my own opinion. I advocate verification of sources.
I’m not even sure I would rely on CNN without a second source. In my opinion, they cater to the “emotions” of their viewers and readers.
But that’s just my opinion.
So let me see if I can disappoint some people and come at this from an entirely different direction. What if I suggested that it was our fault.
I really enjoyed reading this blog. As a soon to be History Teacher I have a vast appreciation for primary sources and the way research used to be done. Today we do not have to deal with library catalogs, old books that are falling apart, dusty libraries, or unhelpful library attendants; we have the internet. The internet has made research and fact finding easier and quicker than ever. However, with this ease, trade-offs have arisen. Students today have so much information at their fingertips that they do not know how to sift through fact and biased fiction. Maybe this isn’t such a good thing. When students had to spend a good amount of time and effort to find a source they didn’t just use the first thing they found, they had to scrutinize each source to insure that they didn’t waste their time with a poor source that could discredit their research.
Sadly for us teachers, teaching students how to deal with internet sources will be another job that we will have to tackle in school 2.0. No one in society wants to accept their role in raising the future generation. Parents aren’t parents, policemen are corrupt, politicians sell out for the highest dollar, and sport athletes are drug users who beat their girl friends and criminals. These role models are no more and teachers have to face this shift in society head on. I will the one to suffer with students who haven’t been raised by their parents, see the dollar as the almighty, and cut every corner that they can. The internet allows students to cut corners in research and proper citation. To combat this teachers will be forced to be the examples of how to use literature appropriately. Citing information is never fun, and for teachers it will become an arduous task because of the levels of information we have to cover in our courses. Doing this will be an addition burden in our already heavy loads and responsibilities. I really hope we will get large pay raises.