Teaching has changed drastically over time, and has shifted from paper and pencil lecture style instruction to lessons that are unique, creative, and engaging. This shift is due to technology, and more specifically, the Internet. The internet not only allows for limitless possibilities of activities and lessons, it also provides endless information and a place for teachers to share and discuss strategies. With the benefits of technology also come drawbacks. One of the biggest negatives to the Internet is the ease of adding information. This means that any person can post or write on the Internet.
Students must learn to accurately assess and evaluate the credibility of any source they view on the internet. This prevents the spread of misinformation, as well as biases and ignorance. The internet is an extremely useful educational tool, but we can not just let students roam the internet without the tools to assess whether their information is accurate or not. To practice digital literacy students should “read laterally, not vertically,” which has the students read for credibility before getting into the content(Weaver). It is also important to emphasize to students that these websites can be misleading, and are designed to trick you. Just because a website may have something that is trustworthy, like a .gov address, does not mean that it is reliable.
With the topic of digital literacy also comes the topic of teaching in polarizing times over hot button issues. When teaching with technology it is impossible to avoid conflicting issues because the students will have immediate access to those events. I have experienced this first hand in my field experience when the students used their chromebooks to look up Trump articles on FOX News. The News Literacy Project article provides effective strategies to teaching through controversial times, and one of those strategies stuck out to me the most. The News Literacy Project writes that students should “Approach news reports as texts” and critically analyze them for their credibility and biases(NLP). This is important to me and something I will stress as an educator because it allows students to think for themselves in an accurate setting. This means they can come to their own political and historical views based on solely the facts, and not misinformation.
I like the NLP’s solution to reading online articles. Students understand information better when the correlation of the material and their lifestyles is stronger. The more connections a student can make to a topic, the easier it is to comprehend. So when reading the news, they can imagine it as a text from a parent or friend. They’ll see more clearly what’s important, as they do the same when reading their actual text messages. Comprehension (of news articles) is vital in weeding through gas-lighting language or irrelevant content. When strategies are in place, goals can be more easily reached (ex. When I make flashcards for studying)
As teachers, it is incredibly important for us to be able to adapt to whatever situations occur around us. We cannot expect things to be the same for our entire careers. We are living in this shift toward a more digital world and it is incredibly important for us to be able to use this to relate to and get through to our students. I do agree with the NLP’s solution to the online aspect of reading and learning, but ultimately it is what is best for the teacher and students in that specific classroom. This shift to digital does present a new series of challenges for teachers to navigate, such as more distractions and misinformation. Overall the digital world is something that is inevitably going to affect this generation’s education and we need to accept that and use that to our advantage.