7710 week 4 Readings
Teaching students to evaluate digital texts is part of being a good digital citizen. It is an invaluable skill in today’s internet-dominated world! Manderino’s article discusses the importance and suggests questioning techniques to teach this skill. When it comes to any text, not just historical texts as the article discusses, it is important to teach these skills. At BC, our library media specialist offered a worksheet that helps students determine the validity of the sources they find off the web. I utilize it often in my freshman and sophomore classes to reiterate its importance in determining usable sources for information. It is not something that is as easy as it sounds. Sites can be misleading and students use the worksheet to work through all the areas to investigate the sources validity. However, students still struggle developing this skill. It is a new literacy so it will take time for schools to incorporate this into their curriculum. Access to technology at elementary schools is also an issue in developing this skill. MAny times people think research is a middle or high school concept but with the internet dominating our reading these days, we have to reconsider when and how often we develop the skill of evaluating websites so students can become more adept at determining what is trustworthy and what is not.
I agree that source validity is an important issue. Our new curriculum has research components and it is supposed to be vertically aligned so that students should be more adept at researching and evaluating information when they get to high school.
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