We spent a lot of money on this, so you'd better get real good, real fast, or POW - Homer Simpson

As we've been learning from this course so far is that there are pros and cons to online resources and hard copy books.

Online databases that have user fees can be extremely expensive for schools and districts. With cutbacks on teacher-librarian time amongst many others, it is surprising that some schools/districts have managed to scrounge up enough money to pay for these. In the district I work in, there must be around three or four databases that either the school or school district has paid for. As you can imagine (from the class discussion postings on how much these subscriptions cost), this is a lot of money.

Although there are many useful pay online resources, it is possible to get around paying for these if we teach students how to find reliable online sources or if we, as teacher-librarians, find some for the students to use. I have come across some free online resources that would be useful to students, such as Bartleby, Awesome Library, Fact Monster, The Canadian Encyclopedia, etc. There are also many others that I have not listed here that students can use to help them find useful information for any research project they may have.

Students use the Internet for everything. They use it to find music, look up video clips, chat with friends, and help with their homework. Although they know how to use the Internet, they do not know how to use it effectively. I have noticed that students will often go straight to a computer and search on the Internet before checking what is available in the library when they come in for a research project. According to Geck (2006, p.20) they "often use Google carelessly to determine or measure the significance of a topic or individual, thereby leading to faulty conclusions." What this means is that these students rely too much on Google results to tell them if something is important or not based on how many websites discuss what they are searching for. For example, Britney Spears would likely turn up more hits (almost 3 million) than Emily Carr (less than 1 million) some students may come to the conclusion that Carr is less important than Spears. Because of this and other bad habits, Geck postulates that students are information illiterate (p. 21) (She bases this on ALA's definition of literacy). I would have to agree with her. Often I have heard stories of students entering "bad" keyword choices when they search for various topics on Google. One TL told me that a student of her's entered "I want to find a book about rats" in the keyword search. Another TL shared that her Gr. 7s don't know how to choose appropriate keywords either.

By teaching students to use reliable online resources, we can avoid the false sense of student information literacy and actually teach the students to be information literate. We have to show the students that what they are doing is not effective and teach them the skills they need to use one of the most convenient and useful technology we have, which is the Internet.


Works Cited:

Geck, C. (2006). The generation Z connection: teaching information literacy to the newest net generation. Teacher Librarian, 33, 3, 19-23.

Wikiality

“Wikiality” was a term I originally came across during The Colbert Report (a television show on Comedy Central) on a segment called “The Word.” This first aired in July 2006. The host, Stephen Colbert, commented on how we can create our own reality on Wikipedia and have that reality be accepted as being true presumably since the general public is so eager to accept the information found on Wikipedia. He also commented that if enough people believe this to be true, then it will be true. (http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/?vid=16386)

Colbert asked the audience to go onto Wikipedia’s site and change Wikipedia to a reality we can all accept. In this case, it was changing information in regards to African elephants. He asked people to change the information to write that the African elephant population has tripled.

This resulted in Wikipedia shutting down that article because of all the inaccuracies being written there.

Colbert has even changed articles, then quoted the Wikipedia articles to show the accuracy of his information. He said that the "G" in Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, stands for "Gansta" and proceeded to show the Wikipedia article that showed this "fact" and thanked Wikipedia for the data (http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/best-of/#clip60819). This is why checking the citations are important when something seems "weird."

This was all done in jest, but it really pointed out the follies of author bias. If we, as authors, don’t believe something to be true (or false) and perpetuate that belief, then others reading it will come to believe it to be true as well. Isn’t this the case with people who deny the holocaust? We all know that this event happened. There is concrete evidence and proof of it in Europe. Survivors of it still exist and give firsthand accounts of their experiences and what they saw. But what will happen centuries from now and the whole event has become a story in a history book? Will people doubt the truthfulness of it because others doubt it now and spread their beliefs as being reality?

Wikipedia is a great learning tool, because it can be updated and changed instantaneously, but the question we should ask ourselves and teach our students is according to whose reality?