I regularly ask my own students to challenge what is being said in the classroom. I advise them to question everything they hear, read or see, to help develop their critical thinking abilities, to practice defending or attacking a theory, to exercise their evaluative skills. I read recently of one professor who deliberately lied once each lesson, and challenged his students to detect the lie. As the lies became more subtle, the students began to struggle to detect the falsehood, until eventually they were at the point where they were deeply scrutinising everything that was presented in the lesson, and going beyond the content to make sure they had discovered the lie. They had to discuss extensively to put themselves in a position where they knew what was correct and what was incorrect. The web is a very fertile place to learn, but we all need to develop our critical awareness of what content is good and what is to be avoided.
What is today's student to make of all this? Deliberately misleading websites are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bad content on the web. Let's take this a little further. How do students discern the difference between a website that hosts good, empirical, well established content, and one that doesn't? And how do they detect when a website is not based on established fact, but is merely a collection of
A superb e-safety resource with separate sections for primary and secondary students to work through. Choose to sign in to save progress or use without signing in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
"it's our responsibility to teach kids how to find and research information, how to judge its veracity, and when it's time to ask for a grownup's help. "
If you want evidence of the way the internet is pervading every aspect of our lives, you need look no further than its effect on education. The internet and social media have dramatically changed both teaching and learning.
Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project decided to examine social networking sites in a survey that explored people's overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.
The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people's social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people's varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class.
An interesting report with the most interesting data being that "100% of students are online in 2011". While the survey data is apparently representative of the Australian population, I would argue that this figure is not the case and that deeper research needs to be undertaken before these figures can be used as a foundation for embedding technology and internet into education. However, it does show the increasing rate of uptake of online activities within Australia and the trends for access information.