Asleep at the switch?
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 05:30PM I think almost no emphasis is being put on giving kids the skills that they need to sort credible from noncredible information. Schools have to wake up and have to give those skills to our kids. It’s the critical thinking skill of the 21st century that they’re going to need, sorting credible from not credible information. And I think we’re asleep at the switch. - John Palfrey Interview with David Pogue, July 22, 2010
Schools also owe it to their children to give them guidance in the self-censorship of materials, the evaluation of resources, and the ethical use of telecommunications. Doug Johnson, Why Minnesota Students Need Access to the Internet, 1994
Oh dear. This is the second time* in the past few weeks that I had this sinking feeling that the great unwashed public just doesn't "get" the importance of crap-detecting on the Internet. I was very surprised when one my tech-culture heroes, Howard Reingold, suggested during a spotlight session at ISTE last month that we use spoof sites like the Tree Octopus and Failure of the Velcro Crop to help educate children about trusting all Internet sites. How last century, I thought. Where, Mr. Reingold, have you been for the last 20 years?
After all, hasn't the library profession been stressing site evaluation for a very long time? Good grief, I'm never exactly on the "cutting edge," but even back in 2001, I wrote in an article for Creative Classroom:
Information jungle survival skill 3: Learn to tell the good berries from the bad berries.
Joey Rogers, Executive Director of the Urban Library Council, observes that libraries should have two large signs in them. The first hanging over the stacks that reads “Carefully selected by trained professionals” and the other hanging over the Internet terminals that reads “Whatever.”
Even very young students can and should be learning to tell the bad information berries from the good ones. Since junior high students often make web sites that often look better than those of college professors, we teach students to look:
- For the same information from multiple sources.
- At the age of the page.
- At the credentials of the author.
- For unstated bias by the page author or sponsor.
Kathy Schrock has a wonderful, comprehensive webpage on website evaluation at <http://schrockguide.org/abceval/>
As students use research to solve problems about controversial social and ethical issues, the ability to evaluate and defend one’s choice of information source becomes very important.
Why has information evaluation not become a "basic skill," as fundamental as decoding text, solving two-digit multiplication or understanding the scientific method? Maybe...
- Teachers (and maybe more than a few librarians) themselves don't have these skills.
- Information evaluation is often highly subjective and value-laden, making it politically difficult to teach in schools.
- There has not been a sufficient sense of urgency communicated to our curriculum masters writers about its importance (Is information evaluation a part of the Common Core Standards? I don't know.)
Remember that guy Sisyphus who kept rolling a big rock up a hill in Hades, only to have it tumble back down each time he neared the summit? Spin the fable all you want, but Sisyphean efforts are damned discouraging.
*OK, the latest brough-ha-ha over the firing of Shirley Sherrod based on poor website evaluations skills is maybe the third time.
Reader Comments (7)
Hi Doug:
I groaned over that, too. But is he right? Is this another example of the public not actually getting what's going on in school libraries these days?
What goes on in the classroom is something else, entirely, and I don't think enough teachers view this as a necessary part of their curriculum. Too many teachers still tell kids to "look it up online"--and I got past that stage in the mid to late 90's!
"Is information evaluation a part of the Common Core Standards? I don't know"
Common Core Standard #8 for ELA:
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
I was also going to add, under writing research in CC:
Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each
source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
Part of the problem, though, is that evaluating information -- deciding what is true -- is not a "basic skill." It is more the end of the educational process than a means.
Hi Doug - I think things are actually much worse than you think. You are in a state that has funded and supported technology integration at a high level compared to most. I am at a state that is at, or very near the bottom of that curve. Evaluating information on the net is SO not even a dust speck on the radar for teachers in my state (and many others), which I won't name so as to not embarrass anyone, (NEVADA!!!). In my school district of 64,000 students we have 1 person in the ed tech department for the entire district and elementary librarians are not certified ... we can't send students to the library outside of our once a week class visit to check out books. At schools like my wife's which is a high income school, this might happen because parents cover it some when they help their kids find info on the web.
I would add, what does this have to do with raising test scores in reading or math? I know that is trite and overused ... but we are still there in a very big way, especially in elementary grades. I think you work with schools and teachers where doing this kind of thinking actually happens and/or can even be considered that it might happen ... in addition you tend to talk to teachers and ed tech folks at conferences that are much more likely to have even heard of this as important. I think the percentage of teachers that even have experience with evaluating web pages themselves is aggravatingly, dismally low.
You (and me) and others have dealt with this for 20 years, but for many, and probably most educators this is new information ... as is sending an attachment on an email or knowing what a blog is. I agree totally that this is where we need to be going ... I think we have barely started that journey even after all this time ... I hope I'm wrong.
Brian
BTW - you might like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olUn4Si22Sg&feature=youtu.be
; )
Wow, reading Brian's comment shocked the heck out of me. Because of where I "hang out" online, because of the type of school where I work (tony, East Coast prep school), I assumed that schools as a whole were farther along than this. I'm still in touch with my old school back home in Washington State (a small, rural district with 68 students K-12!), and I know they are sadly behind the times, but I assumed it was the nature of the school; they are pretty remote, with an aging faculty. If Brian's experience in Nevada is more widely true than I had realized, that is, obviously appalling.
When I commented above, when I blogged this interview myself, I half assumed that Palfrey really didn't know what was actually going on in school libraries these days. This is a HUGE eye-opening for me!
Now, here's a question: How much of this is because teachers don't care to take the time to LEARN? I DO NOT want to pile on teachers--they are under attack from every where these days, often undeservedly so. And, hey, I used to be (am!) a teacher myself! But here's the thing: As I said, I'm still in touch with my old district. I offered to do a series of webinars with them...FREE...on emerging technologies and their classroom application. The superintendent turned me down because they don't have the funds for PGD days to pay teachers. I understand that, but offered to help out any teacher who wanted to do it on his/her own. No-one accepted the offer if they weren't going to get either a)paid, b) credit or c) clock hours. I was appalled. It's certainly not fair to extract a national lesson out of one small district, but I wonder if there are more teachers out there than I thought who really just can't be bothered about this? I always blew off the criticism of tenured teachers just doing their time, and I do still believe most teachers are dedicated professionals, but maybe there is some truth to that criticism. Really, how hard is it to educate yourself these days, with the plethora of information online, whether or not your district is on board.
I don't know...I'm kind of blathering right now, but, as I say, Brian's comment was something of an awakening for me! I really need to process this information for a while!
Jeff - The short answer is that administration won't necessarily stop me from integrating technology, but they probably won't honor me either if I do lots of extra work and do some really cool things and start on my way to a new pedagogy. BUT, if I do that and my test scores drop then I'm in trouble. On the other hand if I follow "The Program" and things don't go well, but I can claim I followed the reading program and the math program, I have cover ... the reading and math programs are "research based" and so if my principal observed me following "The Program" when they walked through and did observations ... and my lesson plans back that up ... you can't blame me if our scores didn't go up ... I followed "The Program." On the other hand if our scores go up and I followed the program I get kudos for doing great ... and under RttT they will not bother me.
So hmmm ... work extra hard and take a chance that my scores will drop and not have the cover of "The Program" ... or do "The Program" and either way I'm OK. Wow! Tough choice. And I don't get this new pedagogy or tech either yet anyhow nor does my administration or other teachers in my building, so my support system will be nil or marginal... uh, decision made!
That's more an elementary outlook ... and there is more to it than that ... but in a nutshell, there you go.
Hi Jeri,
It may be one of those observations that schools don't teach math because the last McDonald's clerk didn't know how to count back change. I don't know - I am thinking fewer kids rather than more are formally taught information evaluation skills. Change is slow and a paucity of librarians isn't helping things move any faster.
Doug
Hi Kathy,
Well, I guess that's better than nothing, but I'd sure like the biggest culprit, the commercial Internet, called out specifically!
Thanks for information,
Doug
Thanks, Tom, for the information and the perspective. I suspect we could call information evaluation a "Habit of Mind" or a disposition as well.
Doug
Hi Brian,
Actually MN has never has categorical funding for technology - we scrape with everybody else for state and local dollars. It may be true that our general funding is higher. We generally don't have the poverty levels associated with educationally challenging students.
The argument that the focus on basic skills keep schools from teaching higher order skills (like information evaluation) is a prevalent one - and one that works against kids in less affluent districts. By doing this we are creating a permanent under class. Of course, Kozol pointed this out 20 years ago in Savage Inequalities.
Your TED was fantastic! I hope you get a wide range of viewer. More than the pundits and professors, folks like you give inspiration and guidance to the people in the field. Thanks so much for sharing this.
Doug