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August 15, 2002
Net-Wise Teens: Safety, Ethics, and Innovation (cont'd)
Teach Kids to Be Web Literate
"Kids are smarter and more worldly than any generation before; they possess a huge amount of knowledge. That's the good news," says Jeff Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy and founder of the World Internet Project. "The bad news is that, like most adults, they don't know how to assess the quality of information." Cole thinks this is partly due to our ingrained trust of major media like The New York Times or network news. As a result, we've never developed the skills to judge whether information is reliable. On the Internet, says Cole, "all bets are off."
The middle school students I talked with at Prospect Sierra seemed to have a healthy skepticism of the Internet as an educational research tool. Zai, an eighth-grader, tells me when she's collecting information for schoolwork, she seeks out trusted education brands like Britannica.com and university-affiliated sites. "So I can be sure what I find is right," she says. Another student, Mickey, says he tries to conduct school research on sites with bibliographies that seem credible.
Granted, the Prospect Sierra kids probably fall into the top percentage of savvier middle school computer users, but they've also had some very grounded help from an Internet Skills unit they're required to take in the sixth grade. The unit's six classes cover four main areas: research skills, Internet search strategies, evaluation, and attribution. Tech coordinator Caryn Gregg leads students through a series of activities using lesson plans she found on Yahooligans. Throughout, students consult an Internet Research and Source Citation booklet she has compiled for them, which includes the school's citation guidelines and relevant articles (see page 44 for a list of Web literacy resources that can help you craft your own guide). At the end of the unit, students are tested on a variety of issues, with questions such as "What is meant by 'primary sources'?" and to "Name two ways you might check if you weren't sure information you found on the Internet was true."
Educator and industry expert David Warlick believes inaccurate and biased information on the Internet is not the main problem when it comes to student research. Rather, it's that teachers aren't always giving the right assignments. He suggests that instead of students simply writing a report "about something," they should be trying to accomplish a behavioral goal-for instance, trying to sway readers that a position is right or wrong. This approach allows students to zero in on finding appropriate information to further their goal, rather than simply looking for "good" or "bad" information. It also makes it less likely that a student will copy and paste text from one place, but instead gather and synthesize smaller bits of information they find from various sources. Warlick has created a form teachers can use to help students evaluate information they find on the Internet in the context of their research goals. It is available at landmark-project.com.
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