Teaching Internet Use: a School Librarian Shows the Importance of Critical Thinking

Using the Internet takes a leap of faith.  Sometimes, however, that leap of faith turns into a swift fall into a canyon of misinformation.  For new students, deciphering accurate, factual information from the slightly inaccurate, wildly inaccurate and just plain weird is a (not so funny) comedy of errors. How do you know it's factual?  What do you look for -- misspelled words, bad grammar, weird statistics?  And more importantly, when you're searching in a second or third language from your own, how can you spot the inconsistencies so blatant to a native reader?The New York Times recently published an article about school librarians, with a description of how school librarian Stephanie Rosalia teaches students to search for information online.Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. "Don't answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find," she warned.Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus. "It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!" Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. "That's wrong."Helping students, whether they be children or adult learners, evaluate a source is an important skill that was previously only in the realm of the educated -- librarians, professors, teachers and editors.  Students, for the most part, walked into a library and received a book or encyclopedia that contained "accurate" information.  The source was used, generally without much question, and that was that.Some may look back on the days of authoritative sources as the good ol' days gone by, but that really isn't the case.  For example, look at the book entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.  This book chronicles the many historical misconceptions that have been furthered by "authoritative" sources over the years...(click below to continue)