Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom: Reflection

The most striking revelation I had about teaching the new literacy skills to my students is how important and necessary it is for them. Today’s student is infatuated with the internet when it comes to finding information for research and projects. I found that a lot of my students were not certain on how to begin a search for a topic. Most wanted to use Google right away, but did not know how to do an effective search for information. I also observed that they were taking information from any old site and not caring or realizing if the site was presenting valid and reliable information. Showing the students what to do and guiding them through the process, bored and irritated some of the students who THOUGHT they knew what they were doing. But by the end of my lesson most of them had been effective at finding information off the internet that was reliable and valid information. The feedbacks that I got from some of the students were that some of them didn’t know that something on the internet is not true. I think that was as hard of a concept to grasp as pi equals 3.14.

I am happy that I had this experience to gain the knowledge that I have. The way it will influence me is to make sure before any research project involving the internet I will have prepared my students for the things they might find on the internet that can be misleading. The internet will be a big part of their learning and using it effectively will do them a great favor. I feel like learning these skills will be one of the things I do at the very beginning of the school year along with the normal routine and getting to know each other activities. I think how to use the internet for reliable and valid information will be a skill that will be used throughout the year, so teaching it at the beginning of the year and reinforcing it throughout the year will be very helpful to my students of the future.

A professional development goal that I would like to pursue is implementing more inquiry based projects in my classroom and perhaps in our district. There are many restrictions on technology use and limits. Perhaps showing other teachers and educators the importance and benefits they have, will allow for more less restrictions. Perhaps the curriculum and administrators will allow or make these projects necessary in a school year. Without that, some students will be missing out on the skills they really need to succeed in the 21st century.