We talked about so much in class, it was amazing how many topics we covered and how fast 2 hours went by while chatting with Debbie Abilock. Kristin does an excellent job as moderator; putting up links to other sites and resources as soon as they were mentioned in the conversation.
So many topics were discussed, but I’d like to focus on just one- how do we teach our young students (grades K-2) to “trust” or not trust information they find on websites, as an introductory lesson to website evaluation.
We talked a lot about website evaluation using the “TRAPS” protocol:
Time
Readability
Authority
Purpose
Summary
Debbie talked about how our bias is to trust (and not just kids). I totally agree with her. Print used to be the standard for whether or not information was accurate and worth our trust. Unfortunately, for many, this trust has also been applied to websites. Some never consider that there are few standards for the information that is put on the Internet.
The TRAPS evaluation protocol can help determine the accuracy of the information presented. I wonder, how can these concepts be taught to children in a simplified manner that is understandable, yet can be scaffolded to future lessons about website evaluation?
Debbie mentioned filter search engines, such as, SweetSearch. These types of search engines (whether for websites, photos, etc.) can be very helpful, but they don’t introduce the concept of evaluation to students.
I liked Kristin’s suggestion of Google Custom Search. It could be a tool to let younger students (as a class) build their own custom search engine that will search sites the class has identified as “useful” for a specific topic.
To do this, a discussion could be opened by using the analogy of junk books vs. good literature (as Debbie suggested) as an introduction to junk websites vs. good websites.
The tricky part is what terms do we apply to this lesson that can be carried through to more advanced lessons? What is junk? What is good?
Debbie suggested starting out with asking, “Who?” and “Why?”. These terms could easily be translated (with a few additional easy to understand terms) to the TRAPS protocol.
Time = When?
Readability = How? (hard or easy is it to read and understand)
Authority = Who?
Purpose = Why?
Summary = Thumbs up? or Thumbs down?
Hopefully these simplified terms (which can be easily translated to TRAPS terminology for future lessons) will be a good starting point for getting kids to question the validity of the information they are finding online and not just taking it for granted. Truth is tricky though. Debbie stated, “Wikipedia says there is no truth just verifiability.” I think that is the unfortunate “truth” of where the direction of information on the Internet is headed. We need to make sure that are students understand this too- through introductory lessons to website evaluation.
I agree about making it clear to students that the information on the Web is not always accurate or consistent - but I need to do a lot more digging to figure out the best way to tackle that problem. It's SOOO complicated :)
ReplyDeleteyes, how do we balance our knack for curating collections and providing resources with the need for students to be self-sufficient selectors. how do we scaffold those experiences?
ReplyDeleteOur bias is to trust, which I personally think says something positive about our species. All that aside, however, it makes it very difficult to talk about some information being trustworthy while other information isn't. This is hard for adults, let alone kids.
ReplyDelete