Digital Literacy

It is too easy today for people to search for answers online, says Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University Stern School of Business, who calls this trend the "Google Search Curse". Damodaran says that because we can look up answers to probelms immediately, we’re losing the agility – not just the ability - to look at a problem and solve it. He teaches his students to avoid this -- and how to be "intellectually nimble" -- by training them how to think for themselves, not just accept other people’s solutions to issues, and think through problems.

He says that obviously fact-based questions are different. You can say, “Hey, go look up on Google search what the tallest mountain in the world is.” Reasoning your way into a factual answer is not going to give you a better answer. But if your question is more analytical, he feels there is an advantage to taking a 30-minute break before you open up Google search and look for an answer.

In a new book called Because Internet, Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how the year you first accessed the Internet determines how you talk online; how ~sparkly tildes~ became widely recognized as sarcasm punctuation; whether emojis are replacing words; and why Internet dialects like doge, lolspeak, and snek are linguistically significant. Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from, or for parents who are trying to communicate intelligently with their children by texts.

Recently, Common Sense Education, which focuses on teaching students to critically analyze what they see and how they interact online as they navigate that space, released a new curriculum that includes lessons on media literacy. The curriculum is for Kindergarten to 12th grade classrooms and is free to parents, educators and schools. 

LinkedIn has changed the terms of service for public libraries that use LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com. The move, being strongly criticized by the American Library Association, will “require a library cardholder to create a LinkedIn profile in order to access LinkedIn Learning," ALA said recently in a press release.

"In addition to providing their library card number and PIN, users will have to disclose their full name and email address to create a new LinkedIn profile or connect to their existing profile," the organization added. "New users will have their LinkedIn profile set to public by default, allowing their full name to be searched on Google and LinkedIn." The organization argues that this is a gross intrusion of library-goers privacy, and an unnecessary step on LinkedIn's part.

The Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act, introduced recently in the Senate, would allocate funds for teaching Americans how to identify fake information on social media, especially that coming from foreign actors trying to disrupt elections. The bill, according to The Hill, would also create a grant program for media literacy efforts in grades K-12.

A recent Pew Research Center report looked at the most watched videos on YouTube and found that videos featuring kids and those targeted to kids are highly popular, clocking in at nearly three times as many views on average as other types of videos. Also revealed is that videos with the keywords "Fortnite," "prank" or "worst" in their title garnered more than five times as many views as those without these search terms.  Content about video games also remains hugely popular on YouTube, with about 18% of English-language videos posted by popular channels during the study period related to video games or gaming. 

Many people feel that one of the advantages of using physical books over digital is the ability to make notes in margins, whether it be study notes in a textbook, recipe modifications in a cook book, or highlighting favorite lines in a novel. Now there are tools to make relevant comments or ask questions digitally in textbooks and non-fiction and fiction books for students, and even include web annotations of relevant resources, writes educator Matthew Farber on the Edutopia site. In his blog post, he shares several such resources that he believes help foster reading comprehension. Look for examples of specific resources and how they are used in the post and pass the information on to your school.

Have you been meaning to talk to your kids about misinformation, but don’t know exactly where to start? In an article on MiddleWeb (intended for middle school teachers), educational consultant Frank Baker shares several examples of so-called fake news, strategies to identify and understand it, and media literacy tips for dissecting advertisements. These are a great place to start to help your kids think more critically about media messages and the entities that create them.

According to an article in Forbes, MindEdge Learning's State of Critical Thinking study found that while most Americans believe critical thinking is essential in assessing the truthfulness of online information, very few – including college educated Americans - can identify suspicious material when they encounter it on the web. Identifying misinformation includes paying attention to such details as spelling or grammatical errors, the presence or absence of photo credits, indications that the content is being promoted or contains suspicious web addresses, and other obvious indicators.

The study, now in its third year, recorded a decrease of 17 percentage points since 2017 in the proportion of respondents who achieved an "A" grade on the organization's digital literacy test. Three quarters of millennial respondents received an "F" grade, failing to get more than five questions right. Interestingly, older respondents (60 and older) scored better than Millennials, who are generally considered more web-savvy.

TechCrunch reports Google is adding a media-literacy component to its digital citizenship and safety curriculum for children, called "Be Internet Awesome." The updated program will include six activities designed to help young Internet users identify fake URLs, interpret clickbait headlines and evaluate sources. Not a bad thing for parents to brush up on either!