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There is a new digital divide on the horizon. It is not based around who has devices and who does not, but instead the new digital divide will be based around students who know how to effectively find and curate information and those who do not.  Helene Blowers has come up with seven ideas about the new digital divide – four of them, the ones I felt related to searching, are listed below. The New Digital Divide: In an age of information abundance learning to effectively search is one of the most important skills most teachers are NOT teaching. They assume students know how to conduct a search, and set them free on the internet to find information. They assume that students have the skills to critically think their way through the searching and the web. Sadly, this is not the case and everyday we are losing the information literacy battle because we often forget to teach these crucial searching skills in our schools. Teachers – especially in the elementary grades  -need to develop a shared vocabulary around the skill of searching. They need to make sure their students learn some basic search strategies and keep applying them until they become almost automatic. Here are some of the searching skills and vocabulary we should be teaching students : Quotation Marks: Students should always use quotes to search for an exact word or set of words. This is useful when you want something like quotes, song lyrics or text from a an exact historical time period. Example: “The Great Chicago Fire” Dashes (or minus sign): Use this symbol directly before a word to help exclude unwanted information from your search Example: Great Chicago Fire -soccer Two Periods: Use this to help you find information between those two numbers. For example you might want to try: Example: Great Chicago Fire October 8..10 Site Search: For a look through the Chicago HIstory Museum site only Examples: Great Chicago Fire site:chicagohs.org         site:Chicagotribune.com

"digital divide"

ack of teacher education and a fundamental understanding of how they can utilize these resources to implement curriculums and asses outcomes. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a great part of the U.S. education workforce is comprised of individuals whose median age is 45 years.

which has created a Digital Renaissance Leadership Academy for teachers, wherein seven teachers from each school take part in weekly professional development sessions and work with online coaches to improve their skill set.

Stick to kid-friendly search engines. Search engines are indispensable tools for web-based research. Most, however, are too indiscriminate to be useful to young users. For example, searching for "White House" on Google returns almost three billion results, most of which will be irrelevant or inappropriate for students.