Judgment

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= Judgment: The ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robison, 2006). = = =

According to [|WorldWideWebSize.com], the “Indexed Web contains at least 20.73 billion pages (Saturday, 10 April, 2010).” Given this staggering figure, it is no wonder that Jonathan Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation (as quoted by Henry Jenkins in [|What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies (Part One)] ) states, “In this new media age, the ability to negotiate and evaluate information online, to recognize manipulation and propaganda and to assimilate ethical values is becoming as basic to education as reading and writing.”

The traditional view of information literacy has been forced to expand as the global digital culture expands. We no longer can rely simply on the “gatekeeping functions of professional editors and journalists, not to mention those of textbook selection committees and librarians, to ensure that the information is generally reliable” (Jenkins et al, p.79). As we venture out into the World Wide Web, we must have the skills to weigh and value information, and know “how to distinguish fact from fiction, argument from documentation, real from fake, and marketing from enlightenment” (p. 81).

Another aspect of the participatory culture on the read/write web is that we must understand “the selfcorrecting potential of grassroots knowledge communities” (Jenkins et al., p. 81). Members of communities such as [|Wikipedia] take pride in maintaining the accuracy, validity, and currency of the information. While errors do occur, there is a systematic community [|approach] to correcting them. The power of these socially-created resources is re-shaping our access to constant, current, changing, revised and updated information.

media type="custom" key="5834139"Report from Wikimania 2006: Where did this come from?


 * [[image:skeptic2.jpg width="300" height="197" caption="LeTiger's photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/letiger/3200427779/"]] || We must question, evaluate, and judge all information. We must ‘foster an attitude of “healthy skepticism”’ (p. 81), “in which all truth claims are weighed carefully, but in which there is an ethical commitment to identifying and reporting the truth” (p. 82). In the era of participatory culture, “of distributed cognition and collective intelligence” (p. 83) where web user-generated content abounds, we require "skills in evaluating the quality of different sources, the probability of perspectives and interests coloring representations, and the likely mechanisms by which misinformation is perpetuated or corrected" (p. 81). ||
 * [|Howard Rheingold] calls this "crap detection" (he borrowed the term from Ernest Hemingway), and includes it as part of being a savvy Internet user. Watch this video for more. || media type="custom" key="5848671" ||

While digital natives do much of their learning outside school, they still need guidance and mentorship from knowledge professionals. As teacher librarians we must ensure we explicitly teach our students judgment skills, as many children do not have the experience, sophistication, maturity, or understanding to consider all the elements of what makes information valid in any given context. The author of this article explains that we should avoid the checklist method of evaluating websites, because checklists suggest that online sources are the only sources that need to be evaluated. Instead, she speaks to the power of annotated bibliographies and teaching students to question.

The 21st Century Teacher Librarian
In her Manifesto for 21st Century School Librarians - You know you are a 21st century school librarian if you . . ., Joyce Valenza has collected a list of 21st century practices for teacher librarians. Here are those that refer specifically to fostering judgment skills in our students, our colleagues, and ourselves: // Digital School Library and the Information Landscape // · Know that searching various parts of the Web may require emerging tools as well as traditional ones. You offer an array of search tools that reach into blogs and wikis and Twitter and images and copyright-friendly media and scholarly content, as well as your databases.

[|Online Reading: Web Literacy - Reading the Internet: Skills for the Information Age]
 * ==The New Skills for Reading Online==

Offers suggestions for effective web searching, evaluation, and reading online. Includes references to the work of Coiro and Leu. ||
 * ==[[image:readingisfundamental3.jpg width="640" height="424" caption="Troy Holden's photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/42961457@N04/4114564467" link="http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyholden/4114564467/"]] == ||

Access, Equity, Advocacy · Are concerned about a new digital divide: those who can effectively find quality information in all media formats, and those who cannot. · Consider your role as info-technology scout. You look to make “learning sense” of the authentic new information and communication tools used in business and academics. You figure out how to use them thoughtfully and you help classroom teachers use them with their classes. // Copyright //// /Information Ethics // · Model respect for intellectual property in a world of shift and change. You encourage and guide documentation for media in all formats and recognize and lead students and teachers to the growing number of copyright-friendly or copy left portals. You understand [|Creative Commons] licensing and you are spreading this gospel. · Teach students about their own digital footprints (using tools like [|Pipl] ) about safety in new landscapes // New Technology Tools // · Are beginning to consider iPods and iPhones as learning tools and storage devices and reference sources. You know that when you interrupt a student she might be in the middle of a chapter, recording a podcast, transferring data, taking audio notes. · Know this is only the beginning of social networking. Students will get to their Facebook and MySpace accounts through proxy servers and their cell phones despite any efforts to block them. You plan educationally meaningful ways to incorporate student excitement (and your own) for social networking. You establish classroom or library guidelines for their use during the school day. · Grapple with issues of equity. You provide open source alternatives to students and teachers who need them. You lend flash sticks and laptops and cameras and. . . You ensure your students can easily get to the stuff they most need by using kid-friendly terms and creating pathfinders. You ensure that all students have access to audio and ebooks and databases.

//Teaching and Learning// · Are concerned that, when it matters, your students move beyond information //satisficing//. They make solid information decisions. · Are concerned about what you can do that Google or Wikipedia cannot. What customized services and instruction will you offer that will not be outsourced to Bangalore? · Are concerned that students learn to evaluate, to triangulate information in all media formats. We must guide them in an increasingly complex world, to make information decisions, to evaluate all their information choices, including books, blogs, wikis, streamed media, whatever comes next. · Share new understandings of searching, and evaluation, and analysis and synthesis, and digital citizenship, and communication, integrating and modeling our new standards, dispositions and common beliefs. // Into the Future (acknowledging the best of the past) // · Unpack the good stuff you carried from your 20th century trunk. Rigor, and inquiry, and high expectations, and information and media fluency matter no matter what the medium. So do excitement, engagement, and enthusiasm. · You represent our //brand// (who the teacher-librarian is) as a 21st century information professional.

Bloom's Taxonomic Hierarchy with a 21st Century Skills Frame
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=Resources for Teaching and Learning about Types of Literacies=

= [|The Multiliteracy Mandala] =
 * [[image:multiliteracy_mandela.jpg align="left" caption="Multiliteracy mandala - alist's photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alist/2558767007/"]] || Create your own mandala or view samples from the site. Kathleen Tynan has created a site where users can reflect, build, and share ideas about the nature of literacy in a digital world. ||

=Media Literacies=

1. Who created this message? 2. What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? 3. How might different people understand this message differently? 4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message? 5. Why is this message being sent? || Questioning Video, Film, Advertising and Propaganda: Deconstructing Media Messages ||
 * ==Media literacy== ||
 * From the [|Center for Media Literacy] - 5 Key Questions
 * ==[[image:my_life_logos.jpg width="550" height="344" caption="my life's logos - captcreate's photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/27845211@N02/2616906744/"]]== ||
 * ==[|Questioning Video]==
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[|Project New Media: Learning Library]
Provides a wealth of lessons and projects that integrate all the skills. One example is The Treachery of Images, where students learn to judge the truth of the image in advertising and media.

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Web 2.0 Literacy

 * media type="youtube" key="YEls3tq5wIY" height="405" width="500" ||
 * Listen for all the different judgments this 21st century student made as she created her personal learning page. ||

= = =References=

Bomar, S.. (2010). A School-Wide Instructional Framework for Evaluating Sources. Knowledge Quest, 38 (3), 72-75. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2002779531).

Churches, A. (2010). Bloom’s digital taxonomy. In //Educational-origami// [wiki]. Retrieved April 9, 2010, from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/‌Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

de Kunder, M. (2010, April 10). The size of the World Wide Web. In //WorldWideWebSize.com//. Retrieved April 11, 2010, from []

Fisher, M. (2010). Visual Bloom’s. In //VisualBlooms// [wiki]. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com/

Help:About. (2010, April 11). //Wikipedia// [wiki]. Retrieved April 11, 2010, from []

Jenkins, H. (2007, June 26). What Wikipedia can teach us about the new media literacies (part one) [Web log post]. Retrieved from Confessions of an Aca/‌Fan: []

Jenkins, H., Purushotma,, R., Weigel,, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A. J. (2006, October 19). //Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century// Retrieved from Massachusetts Institute of Technology website: []

New Media Literacies (Producer). (2008, September 17). Report from Wikimania 2006: Where did this come from? [Video file]. Retrieved from []

Valenza, J. (2010). You know you’re a 21st century librarian if. . . In //Informationfluency// [wiki]. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://informationfluency.wikispaces.com/‌You+know+you%27re+a+21st+century+librarian+if+.+.+.

Wdrexler. (2009, December 4). Welcome to my PLE! [Video file]. Retrieved from []