Crap Detection

As I read Rheingold’s article and watched his vlog post, I found myself agreeing with many of his points; we need to equip ourselves and our students with 21st century literacy skills, and we need to move towards a culture of collaborative inquiry. At the end of the article, I found myself thinking, “So who is this Howard Rheingold guy again and what makes him a leading expert on crap detection?” I guess the case he made for thinking critically about the information you consume really hit home; I quickly took a glance at his bio and website, and saw that he has diverse experience and background as an author, editor and professor.
By encouraging students to ask questions and think like detectives, we can begin to develop students’ abilities and habits to critically filter the information they find online; the challenging part is to make this really matter to them. Do the nine-year olds in my Grade 4 class really care if their research on John Cabot is entirely accurate, or would they rather just find an answer, any answer, to their research questions? Perhaps I could use a site like martinlutherking.org, mentioned by Rheingold, to design an initial introductory assignment on crap detection 101.

Connectivism

George Siemens and Stephen Downes raise some thought-provoking ideas and discuss some key issues that are changing the way we teach and the way students learn today. The ideas of connectivism and the network model of learning are more relevant now than ever due to the ever-expanding array of technology that makes it easier, more efficient and more productive to learn from and with a network. Certainly, I agree with Siemens’ assertion that learning is not about stuffing knowledge into the minds of the learners; rather, as teachers, we need to focus more on developing the skills of our students to seek out and create knowledge for themselves through such means as dialoguing with experts and working with colleagues. In other words, we need to train students to become responsible participants of learning networks and to recognize that knowledge is bigger than what can be contained in any one individual’s mind.