"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.
via nytimes.com
the findings showed that students are not always turning to the most relevant clues to determine the credibility of online content...
As I continue to work with my own children 10, 8, and almost 4 I find that technology IS like oxygen to them...don't know something? Just look it up...and yet the nature of the world online allows them to take the first thing they find as positive fact.
In a day and age of high stakes standardized testing though, where are we teaching kids to "read digital text"? Where are they learning reading and comprehension strategies to deal with hyperlinked text? How are they learning to "read around" the page, tuning out ads and focusing on content? Why is computer class an extra or add on? How do we share the results of studies like this with our curriculum teams and administrators to make this an important subject in schools? #amitheonlyone?
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