Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

5 strategies to build better information literacy in students

We live in the age of information. Thanks to the internet, we now have all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. Just think about it: Cooking, philosophy, engineering, literature–anything you could possibly imagine can likely be found using a simple Google search.

It’s pretty astounding when you take the time to consider it. Of course, many of us have learned the hard way that not everything you find online is reliable or true.

This presents educators with a difficult problem. The internet is an inescapable part of our students’ lives. As they grow, students will turn to online resources to help them navigate their education and build upon what they’ve learned. Yet, at the same time, it’s human nature to focus on information that reinforces our preexisting worldview, and many of us passively ingest all kinds of media while browsing social apps.…Read More

3 ways to help give all students “information privilege”

“Access to an effective school library program is one example of information privilege. The absence of access is one symptom of information poverty.”—Joyce Valenza, On information privilege and infomation equity, December 9, 2018

I had not heard of the concept of “information privilege” before reading Joyce Valenza’s thoughtful and comprehensive post last month. But it certainly seems logical. Our students come to us from a variety of situations, not just of nutritional adequacy, home stability, and family support, but also of informational access.

I believe it is a primary role of the public schools to help close the gap between those who are information privileged and those who are information impoverished. This is a critical component of a culturally proficient school system. Providing good information resources and the skill to use them is both a social goal as well as an economic imperative, with fewer and fewer jobs for those without training and skills.…Read More

5 resources to help students with information literacy

Information literacy skills top many lists of must-have abilities, especially in the age of fake news. Not all results in a Google search are legitimate–but how many of today’s students know this?

Children have access to devices at younger ages, which underscores the importance of teaching them how to look at news with a critical eye and to evaluate the information’s origin. Because today’s students are growing up in an age where information is easily accessed, they need to know how to apply critical evaluation skills when met with information purporting to be truthful.

A 2017 Stanford University study determined that students from middle school through college were not able to distinguish between reliable news sources and sponsored content or advertising.…Read More

The New Librarian: I started a digital badging movement for my students

They said it was boring and it broke my heart. How could something I felt so passionate about be boring to my students? Creating citations is where it’s at! But still, my students labored through the inquiry process, looking forward to getting it over with.

I struggled with how to engage students in extremely important skills like finding, evaluating, and citing scholarly sources; weeding through J.U.N.K. to find gems; becoming global citizens; making informed actions; and exploring digital tools. Then in 2015, my teaching partner and I decided to go one step further with our learning management system. Instead of simply delivering content, we would front load the entire year’s work and allow students to choose what they wanted to work on and when. We also created a rubric for students to evaluate their own work and decide for themselves if they have mastered specific skills. Finally, we created paper and digital badges for students to earn to record their achievements.

We have had success over the last three years empowering our students to choose what they work on and decide if the work they did meets the standards agreed upon with the class. Students are motivated to ask questions, find answers, and share their learning with classmates, teachers, and the Colchester (CT) community.…Read More

School librarians targeted in budget crunch

Los Angeles school librarians must prove they are qualified to teach students if they want to save their jobs.

How will students learn key information literacy skills, and how will teachers get help with integrating digital resources into their instruction, without a full-time media specialist in their school?

That’s the question a national school library group has asked the nation’s second largest school system as it prepares to cut dozens of school librarians in a high-profile example of a trend that is occurring nationwide.…Read More

Editorial: Media illiteracy

Technology itself may not impact education until teachers and students take control of its potential.
Education is what will help today's graduates effectively navigate the flood of digital media now at their fingertips.

Default Lines column from June 2010 edition of eSchool News—President Obama caused quite a stir among the technorati with his commencement address at Hampton University last month.

You might have heard about it: Supposedly, one of the most technologically savvy presidents in our nation’s history—and someone who largely owes his Election Day victory to the power of social media in connecting and engaging today’s youth—decried the tools of the iGeneration as instruments of evil. Or something like that.…Read More

Lots of technology, but we’re missing the point

Technology is not a universal problem-solver.
Technology is not a universal problem-solver.

Though I’m a technology junkie, I continue to revel in the fact that so much of the world’s information is never more than a few keystrokes away. I remember the days of those terrible old search engines that returned 10 million results, most of them irrelevant. I marvel now at the ability of Google or Bing or Wolfram Alpha to deliver pretty much what I ask for.

Educators, from K to Ph.D., have assumed that our most foundational task is to put the best technology into the hands of as many people as possible. Once they have the tools, the assumption goes, our students can flourish. Whether delivering unbelievably cheap laptops or sophisticated scientific databases, education is in a providing mood despite the economic downturn. Many are predicting that the result will be a utopia in which education and technology create the super-student of the future.…Read More