Teaching Students Secure and Ethical Use of Information - Reflection

          This course EDUC-6712I-2 Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom is one of the courses that I have come to treasure for the insight and many previously taken for granted facts that it brought to the forefront and accentuates with a renewed vigor. In this course, I have gained many strategies that will remain with me for life and influence my learning and teaching practice forever! The responsibility placed on us both providence and society put teachers in a vulnerable and precarious position, yet most often, we are not fully empowered to fulfill these roles due to lack of adequate resources, and interference from any quarters. As teachers, we are expected to equip students with the 21^st century skills that will make them contributing members of the society and give them a competitive edge in the 21^st century economy, Warlick, (2010) said teachers are to prepare students for the unpredictable future and teach them how to learn in the new computer information age. Hartman, (2010) opined that we have to work backward, which is the opposite of what we are used to. He pointed out the art of questioning, (Dr. Armstrong noted that, students’ generated questions are better teacher generated questions), searching, evaluating, (Dr, As Coiro, (2003) informed in his article that users of internet must be able to deconstruct what is being red,) synthesizing and communicating as those skills that we have to help our students to learn. Students need to know how to ask the right questions, synthesize pieces of information and add their own signature as well as knowing how to
communicate effectively.

Many experts spoke on the need to teach and empower students to become critical consumers of information, to approach internet with caution and determine the veracity of information encountered online. Beth Philips informed her students on the ABC of websites, while Eagleton, & Dobler, talked about 4As of evaluation, and Jukes, (2007), talked about the 21st Century fluency skills. This course established with precise accuracy how to address and help students to learn, unlearn and re-learn the essential skills for the 21^st century.
                          Striking Revelation about the Teaching of New Literacy Skills

          Jukes, (2007) proposed seven broad categories of the 21st century skills, which had been modified to five under the new digital citizen to include: solution fluency, information fluency, creativity fluency, media fluency; and collaboration fluency. Jukes, (2007) stated that these fluencies are required for contemporary learners to be successful in the ever competitive 21st digital information environment. The first striking surprise even to me as a teacher is the fact that, I thought I knew all these fluencies, but after going through this course of study, I was awaken to a reality that I still have a lot to learn myself about all the media tools that matter in the new information age, and the good news is that, I have begun to learn all these fluencies very swiftly.  My students now realized that all they knew before was “playing” the information, to use Dr. Warlick words, now they have to learn how to use information in an effective way. Students were surprised to now that there are fake or malicious websites out there that are established and supported by detractors for the purpose of misleading the unsuspecting digital information consumers. This is even a surprise to me as well, I previously thought probably there may be few fake websites, but our search using hoax website search engine returned millions of fake website! They also now know that they cannot trust all the information they get online because there is no effective control of who publishes what. The onus is on the consumers of this information to exercise caution and establish the veracity of the information by themselves.

How Experience Gained will Influence My Practice

          Experience people say is the mother of invention. The experience and insights I have gained in this course will forever influence and shape my teaching practice. This course has equipped me with pedagogy to plan, organize, articulate, synthesize and deliver to my students the so much needed 21^st century skills that will help them to have competitive edge in the contemporary economy. I am now better equipped to help my students learn all the 21^st century fluencies as enumerated by Jukes, (2007) in order to get them ready for the unpredictable future ahead of them where collaboration and cooperation are the norm. With the experience I have gained, students will be better organized through various projects and scenarios that will help them to acquire the skills and competencies that will put them in a better stead to compete in the 21^st century economy.

Development Goal I Like to Pursue

             As a lifelong learner, I plan to continue to consolidate on what I have learned so far in this course. This is just the beginning, the best thing that his course did for me is to wet my appetite for online research and develop more repertoire of search methods and carry on regular Action Research to develop myself and consolidate my position as a lifelong learner. I will continue to practice and apply the skills I have learned in this unit to improve my teaching practice by searching for more online resources especially in the areas of media tools that can help in the effective delivery of the curriculum. The only authentic way to know is to practice and apply the acquired knowledge; as a result I will read more about information literacy and even more about the new fluencies as propounded by Jukes, (2007).

The area I really like to focus on and develop is in the area of Teacher Inquiry. The steps that I will take will include but not limited to the followings:

1. Identify a priority area of the “fluencies” that I want to learn more about and want my students to know each term.
2. I will concentrate my reading and web research on and gather as much information and needed.
3. Carry out a survey about what my students already know about it, what they want to know and find out what questions they have about these fluencies.
4. Design questionnaires on the important aspects or parts of the fluency and find answers to those questions.
5. Gather the information and plan on how to disseminate same information to both students and other colleagues that may be interested in the information.
6. In doing this, I will collaborate and cooperate with my grade team members and administration to design the projects in multidisciplinary models. 

References

Coiro, J. (2005, October). Making sense of online text. Educational Leadership, 63(2), 30–35.
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. NewYork, NY: The Guilford Press.

Grade. (2007). Elementary Curriculum. Ministry of Education / Ministère de l'Éducation.  Retrieved August 11, 2011, from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum   
Laureate Education, Inc. 2010 (Producer). Teaching Online Literacy Skills. (DVD). Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Ethical Usage [Webcast]. Supporting

Information Literacy and Online inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Developing Students’ Digital Literacy    [Webcast]. Supporting Information Li literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom.

Baltimore, MD: Author. 
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010d). It’s Not About the technology

[Webcast]. Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom.

Baltimore, MD: Author.          
Laureate Education, Inc. 2010 (Producer). Teaching Online Literacy Skills. (DVD). Supporting  Information Literacy and Online inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.