Information Literacy

One striking revelation I had on teaching new literacy skills to my students during my last course was that students need to be taught how to search for accurate, timely information. I think I learned how to use the internet for research on my own because I am naturally a very curious person and I have a love of learning. I realized that the majority of my students use the internet at home for mostly social and entertainment purposes, so research skills need to be taught by teachers. I also realized that many of my students will believe anything they see on the internet, and I was amused by some of the websites highlighted in the course. The website I really liked was about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. I showed the site to many of my high school students and some of them believed the hoax.

Going forward I would like to use my gained knowledge to structure lessons early in the year so that students learn how to better use the resources available on the internet. This knowledge is valuable for my class, but it will also help the students in their core classes. As a teacher of an elective class it is always good to give the students a reason to take your course, and if the students know they will learn a variety of skills that will help them in their other classes it could help enrollment. I am also going to give more research projects in my class, because there is a lot of information relevant to the television and film industries on the internet that is not up to date in any of our textbooks.

Another change I am going to make is the use of Google Docs with my students. I believe that with the increasing levels of mobility in technology this type of model is going to be mainstream by the time our students get to the workforce. Storing documents on a computer is usually stable and convenient, but documents shared on a server can be accessed and edited from any computer with an internet connection and can be great for collaborative projects.

I would like to more fully develop my website to include more collaborative activities and I would like to spend some professional development time learning how to better share the videos created in my class. I would like to use my video class as a way to help market the many activities and accomplishments of our high school, and I need to find some good forums that are not blocked.