Reflection Blog

The one thing that stands out to me from this course is being able to teach my students how to evaluate websites to determine their credibility. So often do students just jump onto the first site that they see and trust that they are receiving factual information. It is important for teachers to help their students understand what resources are best to use and why. “For students, this means becoming critical consumers of information by comparing and contrasting facts and ideas within a website and from multiple websites” (Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E., 2007)
The knowledge I have gained in this course will influence my teaching by monitoring my students more when we are doing ANY sort of research. Not only is it important to evaluate internet websites correctly but students should be able to do the same with magazine articles, newspaper articles, and books. They should be able to recognize factual versus false information.
One goal that I plan to build on as an educator would be to instill in my students the “why?” and “how?” approach to solving problems. This includes questions such as “Why is this resource not credible?” and “How do I know?” It is important as a science educator for my students to explain their answers not only for science content but for everything in life. A student becomes a better person if they can back their ideas through explanation. In order to achieve this goal, I will consistently ask guiding questions in order to lead my students to give me the correct answers. I will also encourage students to use credible resources in order to explain their ideas about a topic. Last but not least, I will model this strategy as I teach my students to dig deeper into not only school related topics but any topic that they are passionate about.
References
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators