Embracing Technology and the Web in School

Mark E. Moran, Founder, Dulcinea Media

Fall 2010

Our mission: to help educators teach students how to use the Web effectively.

We need to teach studentshow to ask questions.

- Angela Maiers

Young kids ask a lot of great questions

What sound does a goat make?

Ask a five-year-old ...

Let’s it!

The Internet defines the way that young people learn, communicate, and create.

Students feel in charge of information.

Kids have Kids have ““AnswersAnswers”” in the palm of their in the palm of their handhand

Life has become an open-book test.

“Schools run a great risk of becoming irrelevant to students.”

- Peter Pappas

Found our own study materials online.

Today’s students are “digital natives” whose brains likely “have physically changed– and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up.”

- Marc Prensky

Question: How do you begin your search?

Almost half of middle school students chose “I type a question.”

Question: How do you know if a source is a good source to use for a school paper?

Answer: If it “looks good” or “sounds good.” If it has the “correct” information.

Actual response:I don’t know. I just go with it.

What do you do if What do you do if a search does not a search does not give you good give you good results?results?

I I punch the punch the screen.screen. Just kidding, LOLJust kidding, LOL..

65% of students “rarely or never” check the author.

“It doesn’t reallymatter who wrote it.”..

• 50% of high school students and 72% of middle school students say they “rarely or never” check the date of an article.

I can’t find it.

• Not one of the 600 college students surveyed "could give an adequate conceptual definition of how Google returns results.” 6

--ERIAL study (Illinois)

In Conclusion….

A majority of students: don’t know how to form a sound search

query; don’t have a strategy for dealing with poor

results; can’t articulate how they know content is

credible; don’t check the author or date of an

article.

WE’RE LOST

Students in college who had Web literacy training in primary school "take the prize of better grades.”

The rest show up “beyond hope.”

--UC London Research Review

Kids without adult guidance online end up as “feral children of the Internet…raised by the wolves of Web 2.0”

--Henry Jenkins

Recognizing reliable sources+

consider infinite options+

Understanding intellectual property rights+

Engaging modern audiences with conclusions

= EFFECTIVE USE OF THE WEB

Use the Web to ...

• Empower students as creators and publishers

• Connect and collaborate with other classrooms

• Promote change and global understanding

• Research historical and current events

Improving Web literacy starts with your own skills.

“Students see educators modeling an effective research process and learn from it.”

- Colette Cassinelli

There are no excuses:

“too old”

“too new”

“too frightened of technology”

“too shy”

• “Teachers that are waiting for a professional development day, or a workshop to show them how to use technology are never going to do it. You just have to jump in and try something.” 

• -- Brent Jorth social studies teacher

• Brent Jorth,

“There is no textbook for what effective practice looks like in continually morphing information and communication landscapes.”- Joyce Valenza

Commit to being a daily, life-long learner.

Develop a personal learning network through which you reach out across the world to find colleagues to learn from and collaborate with.

The investment you make in time and energy will be repaid multiple times on the back-end.

Without a PLN, no professional can reach full potential.

Most educators in the same boat as you.

More ways to collaborate & commiserate than ever.

Thousands of free sources online.

A PLN that helps you sort them out.

You are no longer the “sage on the stage.”

Collaborate with students and build knowledge.

Let students take over for you.

-Shannon Miller

“Kids haven’t changed. I have.” - Marlene

Thornton

Do you believe in me? Do you believe in yourself?

“Do you believe that what you’re doing is shaping, not just my generation, but that of my children and my children’s children?”

“Believe in yourself.”

- Dalton Sherman, 5th grade, Dallas ISD• http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/daltonsherman

dallasisd.htm

Role models for effective research & writing on the Web

>7,000 articles on evergreen topics

Background on the topic,

related topics and opposing points of view.

Cohesive, comprehensive view

“Addresses the ‘context deficit’” in Web search

- The Knight Commission

“Search here and you're working in a universe of checked, verifiable sources and solid information.”

- Paul Gilster, News Observer