Encouraging digital literacy. Or: I fancy Wikipedia

My first lesson in digital literacy was years ago in high school, except nobody called it “digital literacy.” For an AP US History class we had to write a paper using primary sources, and in preparation for the assignment we took a field trip to the local community college library, which was rich with primary source access. I recall sitting in a dim room with a librarian projecting a web browser onto a screen and dryly explaining that websites with .com extensions were not as reliable as those with .gov, and that .org was not to be trusted either. I’m fairly certain that watching paint dry would have been a more exciting way to spend my day, and I didn’t feel as though I learned anything that could not have been expressed in one or two paragraphs of writing (and, in retrospect and with additional knowledge of how lobbying works, I’m not sure I agree with the notion that .gov extensions are totally reliable, but I digress). Of course, this experience with and definition of digital literacy was not nearly as extensive as I now know that it could have been.

Reflecting on this experience has led me to consider two questions: 1) What constitutes a valuable web-based source for science (especially physics), and, 2) How can I encourage digital literacy in a way that is engaging for students? I know that not every student will be wowed by the wonders of digital literacy, but there must be a way to create an experience that is less painfully boring than the one I had. These are both very broad questions, but I will attempt to peck away at them.

There are loads of valuable web-based sources for science, especially considering that most scientific journals publish online. That said, some of these are well above the comprehension level of most high schoolers (though this presents a separate and awesome opportunity to scaffold and model reading techniques), and are not a good source for trying to understand the basics of a new topic. I would characterize a valuable web-based source as one that presents scientifically correct information in a way that is accessible to a non-expert, such that the non-expert can understand the knowledge and progress to subsequently more advanced text. This could be anything from a YouTube video to a science blog to Wikipedia.

I know this is a point of contention, but I firmly believe in the value of reading Wikipedia for gaining basic scientific knowledge. There are so many scientific processes and experimental techniques that are terribly complicated and easy to confuse, and it is relatively straightforward to gain a basic understanding of what is entailed in the technique by reading a paragraph on Wikipedia. However, sources like YouTube and Wikipedia are not good citations because they can be written by anyone and edited, and so do not add credibility to an argument. I would encourage their use to gain a general understanding of a topic before venturing into other sources with potentially more complicated explanations. Wikipedia, for instance, is used kind of like science training wheels, and it can be used as a great tool for scaffolding information. And this is sort of the essence of literacy—using what is available to you to garner an understanding of something.

As a teacher, I can pick a topic and provide a progression of texts (<-- Did you see that, Steve?), some of which will be examples of valuable information but not good citations (e.g. Wikipedia and YouTube) and some of which will be examples of information from better sources (e.g. Scientific American). This can help students to get a feel of what sources are examples for which, and how to use a source for general knowledge versus a citation.

For me, the more challenging question is the second. How do I encourage digital literacy in a way that is engaging? I suppose I would approach this in the same way that I would approach other aspects of making science engaging for students: make it personal and relatable. For instance, if a student isn’t into science but loves history, then I would try to present physics to that student in a historical context. Similarly, a student could write a blog entry about a physics topic as it relates to history, or cooking, or math, or art, and use strong citations. Alternatively, a student could write about a topic citing appropriate sources and use a program like Taxedo to present it. If writing is challenging for a student, he could make a YouTube video with an audio component. Additionally, the idea of writing as a process rather than a product could be included here: if the student does not use strong citations at first, the product can be edited to include better citations.

Finally, the most important thing for me to do to encourage digital literacy is to improve my own digital literacy. Seriously, what's the deal with Instagram?