A recent dinner conversation involved my 13 year old son asking me how I did homework "way back when you were a kid Mom, like- before google." Once I got over the coughing epidsode that resulted from the "way back when" comment, I taught my son a little something about ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. It went something like this:
Me: We had a set of red, leather bound books that were in alphabetical order and you could go look up information in them.
Son: You could look up anything?
Me: Well.....almost anything.
Son: How many books were in the set???
Me: About 10 I guess....
Son: That's all!? Ten books... I guess your homework was a lot easier back then than mine is now...........
So the thirteen year old had a point. While Encyclopedia Britannica was "safe" and the information was relatively accurate, albeit outdated on many occasions, it was morbidly limited when compared to the information highway available at our fingertips today. We have learned that with the vastness of available information comes the responsibilty to discern what is relative, accurate and yes, safe. As teachers, it is our responsibility to help these young whipper snappers of today navigate through the windfall of available information. It's a little odd that the problem is never the lack of available information but how to weed through the opinions and propaganda of the plethera of information to find truth. One of the ways that I accomplish this is to have several websites that I have researched myself as resources for my students. However, I never want them to be limited by my opinions of relevancey so they also have to site other resources besides the ones I have offered. Two great ideas from our digital literacy research that I will employ for my students is first for them to backtrack all websites and make sure that the root domain is reliable and the other is to use more than one search domain. While google may be the first step for many of our students today, it shouldn't be the only step. So in closing, fellow old-timers, do you think I could get anything for that set of Encylopedia Britannica on ebay?
I have two sets, I beleive they might have been updated in 1978.When I was in school we did not have them at home since my house was 600 square feet,I used the neighbors. Now the I-Phone has more information than all the libraries when we grew up. Great post.
ReplyDeleteSherri- loved your post! I could not have said it any better! I had a similar conversation with my teenage daughter and she was dumb-founded when I told her that I went through college not once but twice without a computer of any kind! She thought I was making it up. Then I showed her my old typewriter and she couldn't stop laughing! Thank you for sharing as I don't feel like I am "out here all alone!". I have embraced this new technology slowly in the past but am going to jump in with both feet now just to keep up with my students and keep them engaged. Again, thanks for sharing!
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