How Do We Help Our Students Gather Information Using Digital Resources?

I think before students are given the opportunity to use digital media to gather information for reports etc. A lot of time should be spent front loading the activity with the skills students will need. Nobody owns the information on the web, it is public domain and most authors are no even mentioned. Therefre skills such as the ability to discern what sites would be appropriate and reliable is very important as well, vocabulary students might come across needs to be taught, and how to pick out main ideas or key words from the passages needs to be taught. Once students have a strong foundation, the next step should be for the teacher to decide what is it she/he wants the students to learn and what digital resources would effectively support the outcome and just as importantly, what digital resources are available to the teacher to use. The older the student the lesson ownership the teacher needs to take for laying out sites to visit and types of information to gather. However, regardless, the teacher will need to have clearly laid out expectations and information for students to access. Things to plan for are: predetermined sites to be used, paragraphs tagged, graphic organizers, adaptations in place for struggling students and what is going to be the final project for assessment.

Should We Use Popular Culture In Our Classroom?

I think using popular culture in the classroom can be an interesting way of capturing students' attention and engaging them in the lesson. However, like any media, whether on the internet, radio, or TV, it needs to be critically assessed by the teacher. What is the purpose of the site and it's usefulness to the lesson? Can the message be misinterpreted? Who is the intended audience of the message? Since the meaning presented in the media can be taken differently by different viewers, the teacher has a difficult job in not only justifying the use of the media to support her curriculum and lesson but ensuring that it is appropriate for her students. As well, students need to be educated to critically view media so as not to be misdirected or misinformed. It comes down to what is media literacy and how are schools going to address it? I think the Ministry of Education needs to look at developing curriculum as part of the technology outcomes, on media literacy. What do we want students to know that is appropriate for their age group? Where can teachers access resources to teach media literacy? Filtering and critically reflecting depends largely on the viewer's developmental stage. For example, preschoolers typically have media controlled by their parents while teenagers are given more freedom and are more able to grasp critically thinking skills and ideas with more understanding. It is not solely the responsibility of the teacher to develop media literacy but also of parents and the producers of the media. It is impossible to take every example and teach the embedded purpose of created media in each one. The main goal is the teach the skills for students to be able to apply them the situations on their own.