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Re: Google is the new nonfiction
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From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:26:52 -0400 (EDT)
"I think it’s a question of information literacy. What I frequently see is the child’s (and parent’s) inability to pull many f acts together from a variety of sources: Internet, print and primary."
Celeste is making a crucial point. Of course students rush to Google -- as once -- you may all recall -- they (we) rushed to the encyclopedia. Everyon e wants a quick, one stop shoping, answer that allows you to complete the a ssignment and move on. But the ability to gather that information, to fill out those data points on whatever grid of true and false and identify and d efine a worksheet or assignment may require is not nonfiction literacy. Ins tead, nonfiction literacy is the ability to select information, to recogniz e point of view, to construct an argument, to be open to contradiction and counter views, and to present the narrative you have arrived at in a compel ling form. It is that nonfiction literacy -- that ability to think with inf ormation and render the results on a page -- that the new standards demand. And there the internet is at best a supporting player. That is why I alway s tell students to begin with a secondary source -- figure out your argumen t, your question, your approach -- then
use the net to find specifics. So w hile students do rush to Google, and teachers tolerate that, or use databas es which are themselves constructed out of web snippets, they will soon hav e before them a different, and far more important challenge. I see our nonf iction books as modeling ways to "pull many facts together." as Celeste say s. We cannot cover every fact, but we can show how to do it. Teachers thus can use our books to model process, even as their students use Google to hu nt for bits and bytes of information.
Marc Aronson
Received on Tue 12 Oct 2010 09:26:52 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:26:52 -0400 (EDT)
"I think it’s a question of information literacy. What I frequently see is the child’s (and parent’s) inability to pull many f acts together from a variety of sources: Internet, print and primary."
Celeste is making a crucial point. Of course students rush to Google -- as once -- you may all recall -- they (we) rushed to the encyclopedia. Everyon e wants a quick, one stop shoping, answer that allows you to complete the a ssignment and move on. But the ability to gather that information, to fill out those data points on whatever grid of true and false and identify and d efine a worksheet or assignment may require is not nonfiction literacy. Ins tead, nonfiction literacy is the ability to select information, to recogniz e point of view, to construct an argument, to be open to contradiction and counter views, and to present the narrative you have arrived at in a compel ling form. It is that nonfiction literacy -- that ability to think with inf ormation and render the results on a page -- that the new standards demand. And there the internet is at best a supporting player. That is why I alway s tell students to begin with a secondary source -- figure out your argumen t, your question, your approach -- then
use the net to find specifics. So w hile students do rush to Google, and teachers tolerate that, or use databas es which are themselves constructed out of web snippets, they will soon hav e before them a different, and far more important challenge. I see our nonf iction books as modeling ways to "pull many facts together." as Celeste say s. We cannot cover every fact, but we can show how to do it. Teachers thus can use our books to model process, even as their students use Google to hu nt for bits and bytes of information.
Marc Aronson
Received on Tue 12 Oct 2010 09:26:52 PM CDT
