EDUC+512+Educational+Issues



I feel that questioning the source--where the information is coming from, is the most important thing I learned when I was in school. Children have such a tendency to instantly believe anything they read as the truth. Perhaps they couldn't possibly understand why someone would waste time writing something down that was fake. Back when I was in school, there wasn't much of an internet around. Questioning the source or validity of a piece of writing would typically stem from a newspaper article or magazine. If it wasn't a fictional novel, a book was considered to be the golden truth. Why would publish it if it weren't?

Nowadays, with webpages so easy to create, and the internet so easy to access, misinformation is rampant. Ultimately, nobody is responsible for the accuracy of information on the net. Unless you are a website that claims to have facts (like wikipedia) you have every right to make a bogus webpage. It's freedom of speech. As a teacher, we must teach our students how to filter through the "phony-baloney-bull" and figure out if the webpage they are looking at is valid and credible. One way to do this is to have stude nts corroborate the information they found on one site with another site. Also, I would introduce them to some well-trusted websites that are serious (like CNN, NASA, and Discovery, to name a few.)



I do not like the idea of a 100% online high school. To properly do an online class, one needs self discipline and self-motivation, which I'm not convinced many teenagers have. I do see a benefit to taking one or two classes online, especially for those students who qualify for an AP class that their school doesn't offer. Those AP-level students surely have enough self discipline and motivation to take some classes online. However, for your average high-schooler, I feel that a lack of social interaction, which would most likely take place if they were in a 100% online school, could be detrimental. Teenagers need to be social. They need to interact with others in order to gain life experience and start figuring out who they really are and what makes them tick. Yeah, teenagers being "social" can be annoying, but they need to get all of that socially awkward and annoying junk out of their system while they're young so that when they get older, they recognize those immature behaviors and grow from it. I feel that if they don't do it when they are young, their maturity process could be stunted.

Additionally, an online class lacks "teachable moments" and a physically present adult mentor/role model. Online classes require a lot of reading and reflection that typically occurs alone. I personally don't trust that a teenager would do all of that reading and reflecting. I have heard of high schools that have online classes in a computer lab, so that the students are in one room together on their computers, being supervised by an adult. This is a good idea. The school can still get money for their attendance, and parents know their kids are off the street. But to spend all day in a computer lab is still missing that teacher/student dynamic. Threaded discussions are fine, but an intense classroom discussion/debate is way more engaging.



I would allow my students to use wikis as a starting place to find initial information about a topic. Beginning at Wikipedia is a great place to start out and discover general information. For real, valid, verifiable research, a reputable website would be extremely preferable to Wikipedia. I typically take everything I read off of it with a grain of salt. Therefore, I would never allow my students to submit a paper to me that sites a wiki as a source. I'm not sure what sort of steps wikis could take or what sort of policies they could enforce that would give them more credibility or public confidence. Letting anybody off the street come in and alter content is a risky policy. I'm sure they saw this outcome as a possibility.