Sunday, June 8, 2014

Digital Literacy


By teaching Political Systems and Economics, I face a challenge of real creditable sources. In other subjects, truth can be self discovered. Math and Science are based by actual equations and experiments. Grammar is finite depending on the format used by the school or institution. But Social Studies... Oh Social Studies... The subject of opinions and points of views.

With Social Studies, let's use the experts Sean Hannity and James Carville.
  1. They are CREDITABLE. They have been in the news business for years: Hannity gained national attention in 1996 and Carville in 1991.
  2. They are CURRENT. Hannity is still on conservative radio with his own show and Carville is a Fox News contributor. 
  3. They have an AUDIENCE. Both are political icons and are highly respected by both conservatives and liberals.
  4. They are both ACCURATE. This, of course, depends strictly on the audience that follows them.
  5. Their livelihood is based on their POINTS OF VIEW. The whole reason they are who they are is based on the way they express themselves and the facts they present to their audience. 
The same is true for the websites students and teachers can use. There are plenty of websites, blogs, e-books, and scholarly reports that fit all of the criteria needed in a reputable digital tool, but most sites will have a bias.  The challenge is how to determine which site is a valued source for education. 

In my walkabout, I found some valuable resources that can help me bring creditable evidence to the classroom and share sites with students that can be a value to them when conducting research:

  1. Open Edu Consortium - oeconsortium.org -[Social Studies Resources - I will be using this for my higher education as well as the students.
  2. Thinkfinity - thinkfinity.org - [Social Studies Resources - The community closes on June 30th but the resources will be still available.]
  3. Peer 2 Peer - p2pu.org - [Social Studies Resources - Really cool resource for individual ideas for lessons.]
  4. Gooru American Government - goorulearning.org -[Social Studies Resources - Really helpful in teaching Political Systems.]
During my walkabout, I also learned ways to chose better sites for my students and help them determine proper sites for their research:
  1. Web of Trust - mywot.com - [Website Check - Great website for site validity.]
  2. Evaluating Websites - asha.org - [Website Check - This site will help me with testing a websites validity.]
  3. Wiki TLDs - wikipedia.org - [Website Check - Good history and explanations of TDLs]
  4. Stop Badware - stopbadware.org - [Website Check - If my site gets a cold, here is the doctor.]
A policy with our online class is to have a webpage dedicated to resources that have been confirmed and validated for their research. If a student finds a website they believe to be a worthwhile source, we can use some of the above sites to determine the source's reputability.

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