Digital blog post #C

Maloy et. al (2013, pp. 118-119) brought up a good point on the subject of search engines. They note that “knowing only how to find information is insufficient if teachers and students are to avoid becoming immersed in biased, faulty, or useless data.” Many learn how to find what they are looking for, but how many are paying attention to who and where this information is coming from. It wasn’t until college that I learned to pay attention to .com sites versus .edu, .gov, etc. Some sites, emails, amongst others may appear to have value at the initial viewing, but then may realize that it’s just a sugar coating. There is also the problem of keeping students from seeing sexual and other inappropriate conduct, as seen when looking for pictures even of the most innocent nature. What’s out there to help protect our kids, and will it really work?

                After reading further through the text, Maloy et. al (2013, pp. 126-127) discuss resources to help with the safety of students on the web and finding appropriate material easier. They pointed out a site called Razzul, which only allows access to sites appropriate for children ages 3-12, and also Net Nanny and netTrekker, which are programs that can “monitor, block, and report data.” They also discuss associations that give suggestions and tips to help keep your kids safe. The problem that I foresee here is that these things can be inviting, and so it’s not always the child knowing that they shouldn’t, but having the conviction and the desire to not go there that needs to be present. Installing one of these programs would probably make me feel more comfortable with what my students were doing. They also mentioned giving student’s access to sites preapproved by the teacher, which would also be useful. One problem that I ran into years back after trying to test a website blocker, was that it blocked even safe sites, and so that became frustrating. Hopefully, these programs have weeded out these problems.

               Evaluating online information can be very hard, and even harder to know if what you found is actually correct. Maloy et al (2013, pp. 128) point this out with a story of a class that researched how thanksgiving came about. At first they were hit with tons of websites, many of which didn’t have what they were looking for. After digging deep they were able to find other information that was left out of their textbook. When writing textbooks, an author cannot include every detail, they must decide what they think the readers should know. I believe that this leads to the problem of potentially biased information with details left out that someone may not wish people to know to sway them in a direction that aligns with some sort of goal or agenda. Material can be presented in a manner that seems good, where as another could discuss the same topic trying to prove it bad. Without proper background, true evidence, the full picture, or even morals that everyone can agree on, how do we teach and write material that allows students to make their own decisions? Is the information that we have been taught, true? Or have we been deceived into a certain way of thinking already, but think we are ok, and teach, never really having dug deep into the material that we think that we know.

Resources:

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly

Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Short, Adam (2016). Performed by www.wordle.net