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"iPads can be powerful teaching tools. In classrooms around the world iPads are mainly used by teachers and students for consumption, curation, and creation of information. Naturally, due to its simplicity, consumption of information is the most common way in which iPads are used in and out of the classroom. Also, many people use iPads for curating and organizing content. However, creation of information is one of the most powerful ways students can use iPads in the classroom because it allows them to unleash their creativity and illustrate their knowledge in multifaceted ways."

"Michelle Joyce doesn't shy away from politicized science topics such as climate change. In fact, she works to equip seniors at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Florida with the skills to accurately evaluate those topics on their own. Along with teaching chemistry and physics, she offers a class called "thinking skills" where students solve logic and math puzzles while also enhancing their media literacy. Students go beyond just learning about legitimate sources of information on the internet and delve into just how the information is put together in the first place. But teaching students those critical thinking skills only as they're about to depart for college can be too little too late. "It's a really hard thing to teach within the space of everything else that you need to teach in a classroom," Joyce said. "It's crucial that we teach it as early as we can." The internet has no shortage of dubious information; and the ability to evaluate health and science claims is a subset of media literacy. With the abundance of health/science content students may only see via social media, kids are ill-equipped to discern hype from real science."

"Today, students have more homework than the generations of students before them. They also have plenty of distractions in and out of the classroom like social media, social media marketers, online gaming and online streaming. With countless distractions and piling assignments, holding students' attention in the classroom can be challenging. Helping them to absorb and retain new information requires more and more creative approaches. Research shows that presenting information visually makes a huge difference. Visual content gets processed faster and remembered for longer periods of time (as opposed to plain text). That's why using visuals in the classroom is a great approach to helping your students learn effectively, and even enjoy what they're learning. So it's time to step away from traditional teaching materials, and embrace an arsenal of visual content. Equipped with the right online design tool, you can create engaging visuals easily and without any design experience at all. We'll cover 10 different kinds of visuals that can help you engage your students in the classroom: Process infographics Informational infographics List infographics Comparison infographics Research reports Lesson plans Mind maps Progress reports Charts and graphs Posters"

"The Internet is full of useful information … and it's getting fuller every day. The struggle these days isn't finding enough information. It's knowing what to do with it when we find it. That's curation. Students can act like museum curators, finding the best and most representative pieces to add to their collections to share with others. It's an important life skill, too. As they get older, knowing how to gather, organize and make sense of useful bits of information will help them be more productive and efficient."

John Green explains why lateral reading is important so as to fact check information you read in your browser. A phenomenal video in true John Green style, that makes learning about validity of information a breeze.

"In today's world, literacy goes beyond just the basic ability to comprehend text. Today's students will also need to master a new skill-digital literacy. Cornell University defines digital literacy as "the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies and the Internet." Digital literacy, by this definition, encompasses a wide range of skills, all of which are necessary to succeed in an increasingly digital world. As print mediums begin to die out, the ability to comprehend information found online becomes more and more important. Students who lack digital literacy skills may soon find themselves at just as much of a disadvantage as those who cannot read or write. Because digital literacy is so important, educators are increasingly required to teach students digital literacy in the classroom. In many ways, this is similar to what educators have always done in teaching students to read and write. In other ways, however, digital literacy is a brand new skill. Most students already use digital technology, such as tablets, smartphones, and computers, at home. Many students already know how to navigate the web, share images on social media, and do a Google search to find information. However, true digital literacy goes beyond these basic skills."

"In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and, above all, to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world."

"Dr. Alison Head and her Project Information Literacy (PIL) research team recently released the findings of a new national study on college students and how they consume and interact with a vast and deeply polarized news ecosystem. The News Study findings are the result of an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 diverse colleges and universities. The research also included computational analysis of Twitter data associated with respondents, as well as a Twitter panel of 135,891 college-age people. In the study's press release, Dr. Head shared: News is fast, social, and visual and typically delivered to students in posts, alerts, tweets, and conversations that stream at them throughout the day. And young news consumers are left to assemble and interpret what news means, while many take this evaluative step, others do not. So what? The News Study's Executive Summary offers Five Research Takeaways as well as Six Recommendations."

"In a "post-truth" era where people are increasingly influenced by their emotions and beliefs over factual information, fact and fiction can be difficult to distinguish, and fake news can spread rapidly through mainstream media sources and social networks. Moreover, fake news is often meant to do harm, by tricking us into believing a lie or unfairly discrediting a person or political movement. Given this malicious intent, students must learn to approach news and information with a critical eye in order to identify intentionally misleading sources (although recent studies confirm that this is an uphill battle for both adults and young people). Teachers therefore play a crucial role in ensuring that their students develop the skills to decipher the many streams of information available to them."

"The Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies (F-10) comprises two related strands: Digital Technologies knowledge and understanding - the information system components of data, and digital systems (hardware, software and networks) Digital Technologies processes and production skills - using digital systems to create ideas and information, and to define, design and implement digital solutions, and evaluate these solutions and existing information systems against specified criteria."

"The internet doesn't come with an instruction manual, but it should-to give users the skills to separate truth from falsehood so they can distinguish between propaganda and the indisputable and confirmable. And colleges should be the place leading students through this reference book. That's the argument of Michael Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, and it isn't just some "hot take" designed to be provocative. He actually wrote the manual. And he has already convinced more than a dozen colleges to adopt it (and more than 100 college libraries to prominently link to it). Recently, he's started research in an effort to prove that it works (and can help preserve American democracy). Plenty of people are talking about the importance of information literacy these days, and many educational institutions see it as part of their mission. And yet it's more complicated than it seems. Earlier this month researcher danah boyd gave a provocative keynote speech at SXSW EDU arguing that media-literacy efforts at colleges are "backfiring," turning out graduates that are good at questioning everything, and selectively believing what their gut tells them is true."

"A high-quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. Computing has deep links with mathematics, science and design and technology, and provides insights into both natural and artificial systems. The core of computing is computer science, in which pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. Building on this knowledge and understanding, pupils are equipped to use information technology to create programs, systems and a range of content. Computing also ensures that pupils become digitally literate - able to use, and express themselves and develop their ideas through, information and communication technology - at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world."

"Available as a web-based tool or an iPad application, Padlet allows teachers and students to create virtual bulletin boards where collaboration, reflection, publishing and sharing of information can occur. As a synchronous learning environment, Padlet supports interaction, sharing, and collaboration in real-time or as an asynchronous learning environment allowing students to learn at their own pace and time. When using Padlet, users can display information in a wide variety of file types, including: links to Google Docs, display images of student work, text, audio reflections, and videos from the camera roll or YouTube. Padlet's formats  allow for a more customized experience for users. A mind-mapping format called Canvas provides the opportunity to move sticky notes to facilitate the creation of mind maps. Users  create visual connections among concepts, facts, and thoughts while providing a way to organize and synthesize information. Recently, I've begun to use Canvas as my "go to" mind-mapping tool. The Canvas format enables teachers and students to work collaboratively across devices and settings while helping learners to see relationships between concepts.  Canvas gives students a way to visually represent their thinking while providing teachers insight into a student's understanding of a specific concept or idea."

"News has evolved, and how you read it needs to evolve too. It's not about going to one site any more. It's also not about reading through social networks. Reading the news today isn't as simple as it used to be. There is an information overload that you need to counter. Plenty of sites have their own biases that you have to manoeuvre. And lots of smaller news outlets have the most interesting articles. The 5 Best News Curation Apps to Fight Information Overload The 5 Best News Curation Apps to Fight Information Overload You've got so much vying for your attention -- news articles, Reddit posts, tweets, Facebook posts -- but what if you could get it all curated in one place? READ MORE So change how you read news: take small bites, track a single subject, or read the most trending articles. These sites and apps will give you an interesting way to consume news."

The K-12 Computer Science Framework was developed for states, districts, schools, and organizations to inform the development of standards and curriculum, build capacity for teaching computer science, and implement computer science pathways. The framework Computer science is powering approaches to many of our world's toughest challenges. The K-12 Computer Science Framework informs standards and curriculum, professional development, and the implementation of computer science pathways. 2 K-12 Computer Science Framework Executive Summary promotes a vision in which all students critically engage in computer science issues; approach problems in innovative ways; and create computational artifacts with a practical, personal, or societal intent. The development of the framework was a community effort. Twenty-seven writers and twenty-five advisors developed the framework with feedback from hundreds of reviewers including teachers, researchers, higher education faculty, industry stakeholders, and informal educators. The group of writers and advisors represents states and districts from across the nation, as well as a variety of academic perspectives and experiences working with diverse student populations.

"People of all ages struggle to evaluate the integrity of the digital information that rains down with every web search and social media scroll. When the Stanford History Education Group released findings showing that most students couldn't tell sponsored ads from real articles, among other miscues, it intensified the scramble for tools and strategies to help students discern better. But a more recent study by Stanford's Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew suggests that many of the techniques that students and teachers employ - which include checklists and other practices most recommended for digital literacy - are often misleading. A better solution for navigating our cluttered online environment, they say, can be found in the practices of professional fact-checkers. Their approach, which harnesses the power of the web to determine trustworthiness, is more likely to expose dubious information. The following guidelines for interrogating online information, inspired by the fact-checkers' techniques, will increase students' odds of determining unreliable sources (and consuming reliable ones)."

"The pandemic has raised concerns about the way stress is affecting kids. Even though the word 'trauma' is on a lot of worried adults' minds these days, information about it is wide-ranging and can leave people feeling unsure about what to do next. Trauma is a response to life-threatening events, harmful conditions or stressful environments, writes Vermont-based educator Alex Shevrin Venet in her book "Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education." As students transition back to learning in school buildings, traumas that have been hard to see during Zoom classes may become more apparent. On top of that, adjusting to new schooling structures may be another hurdle for young learners and teachers alike. Educators who want to create a nurturing school environment for returning students or hybrid learners may find solutions in trauma-informed education that uses an equity lens."

"There are a lot of labels that describe the ethos and characteristics of certain times in history. The Dark Ages. The Renaissance. The Age of Enlightenment. Most recently, we've browsed, texted, and Google'd our way through the Information Age. What comes next, and when does it start? Further, what causes the movement from one epoch to another, and how does that change once technology is not just a catalyst, but the foundation for social interactions?"