Week 8 Reflection

Dr. Douglas Hartman discussed the need to better prepare our students when he stated, “We really need to prepare them for their future not our past. Our past was rooted in book culture. The future will be rooted in online and digital media” (Laureate, 2009). As educators we must strive to prepare our students to be successful in this ever-changing technological society.

One striking revelation that I had during this course was my realization of the importance of teaching my students how to safely and effectively search for information using the Internet. In my history class, my students use the Internet on a regular basis to gather information. I usually provide links on my webpage so that students are not wasting class time searching. However, there are times when my students are conducting research on a variety of topics, and it would not be feasible for me to find resources for all of my 8th grade students. Because of this course, I have a better understanding of the need to teach students to think critically about the information that they find on the Internet. Being able to recognize and analyze key pieces of information included in the URL will help my students narrow down which sites are reliable and which ones are personal opinions (November, 2008). Because of this course, I now have the skills to help my student identify valid and reliable sources on the Internet.

In the future, one goal that I have is to spend more time modeling for my students how to conduct effective searches using key words that are not too broad or too narrow. I will also model how to evaluate the usefulness as well as the reliability and validity of each site (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007). To accomplish this goal, I will show my students the iMovie that I created where I recorded my thoughts as I analyzed the website www.martinlutherking.org/ which was clearly created to mislead and confuse students instead of providing them with factual information. Modeling using this teacher think aloud strategy will provide my students with an effective example of how to find reliable information on the Internet.

As an 8th grade teacher, I have the unique responsibility of teaching United States history to students who think history is boring and not relevant to their lives today. This is a real challenge. As an educator, I try and bring history to life for my students by showing them the relationships between history and today. Project based learning helps me to do this. Project based learning is described as fostering creativity and critical thinking skills while encouraging responsibility by allowing students to express their learning in different ways (Laureate, 2009). By the end of each school year, I believe my students have a better understanding of United States history as well as a better understanding of the need to continue learning.

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore: Author.

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.