I understand distributed learning to be the idea that knowledge construction does not occur from one source but from experiencing and engaging with many different sources of information. It is through the interaction with so many different, and sometimes conflicting sources, that a student can build a sophisticated understanding of a topic. The internet provides an excellent opportunity to expose students to a deep world of distributed learning. As educators our role in this is to help guide students through what they can find online and help them assess the content as being appropriate, relevant, etc. But even in this action student learn. In my other course we are developing a lesson on digital information literacy, where we lead students how to find and evaluate sources online across a number of dimensions. I believe, regardless the subject, when it comes to engaging students in distributed learning through online digital resources a lesson on digital information literacy is necessary. The implications of having access to JIT and on demand content is one of the major reasons why I think a lesson on digital information literacy is so important. With so much information at a students fingertips it is essential for them to learn how to evaluate content and determine if it should be consumed or not. While exposure to multiple view points is important, understanding that not all published content should be given the same level of consideration is an important lesson to learn, and to learn early.
Hi Kari,
Very much agree with your post. Students today from a young age have access to so much information. It is crucial that we teach them to question the content they are reading and check their sources through different means. I teach grade three, so my students are 8 turning 9. We begin teaching them this at this age, whereas when I was in grade school, it was something that didn’t learn until middle school. We use websites and resources like https://www.allaboutexplorers.com/ which are explicitly made to teach students that they can’t believe everything that they read online. Material needs to be questioned, and you should be looking at multiple perspectives to get the whole picture.
Have you come across any good resources or tools that you use in your practice to teach research skills?
Cheers,
Sarah
HI Sarah,
I totally agree! I don’t remember there being any explicit lessons about what to trust and what to question. But I grew up when web based research didn’t really exist…other than grabbing pictures (that would take a million years to download). I think now it needs to start young and be distributed across all disciplines as it isn’t really subject specific knowledge!.
I don’t have a specific tool in mind, but I will share the site that me and my group are developing in ETEC510 when it is done. We are calling it a digital literacy primer! It is aimed at a G11 audience, but with some tweaking I think it could go down to G8.
Cheers,
Kari
Hi Kari
I like the fact that you brought up there are “many different sources of information” for learning.
I wonder why parents do not give their children those many different experiences. Many parents use screen time for babysitting — Children need to get outside and explore their neighborhood. I remember my mother taking us to the local beach/park every day in the summer. We would have to swim between the red buoys and when we got older we could walk to the pier and explore under it at low tide.
Christopher
Hey Kari,
I think you are spot on with it being educators role to help students judge a resources appropriateness and relevance. Especially through middle school, I have found that students struggle so much when being critical about a resource. In the past I’ve given them checklists to help determine whether or not a source is worth pursuing further. Too many times I’ve seen students spend 30-40 minutes on a website, only to conclude that “it wasn’t very helpful.”
I fell like that is one major difference between a library and the internet. Information in a library is already curated. They wouldn’t be in the physical library if they weren’t useful to the immediate audience. Further, for a book to be printed, a publisher must see value in it. Useless writing is extremely hard to get published and distributed.
As a result, libraries do teachers a lot of favours. They all but assure a teacher that their students will find books at a reasonable standard. The internet does little of this for us, and is much like the wild west. Students can get stuck on websites that are unhelpful or flat-out wrong in the information they present.
While a variety of content qualities will continue to pop up on the internet, hopefully we can grow more adept teaching students to find the best information. Ideally, this wouldn’t only happen at a teacher level, but at a provincial level, making its way into all areas of the curriculum.