I Don't Mean to be Critical, but...

The article "From Print to Critical Multimedia Literacy: One Teacher’s Foray Into New Literacies Practices" discusses the need for students to be literate in digital texts.  This is, after all, the 21st century!  We may not have the transportation the George Jetson led us to believe, nor the somewhat robotronic yet surprisingly witty housekeeper, Rosie; but we do have an unbelievable wealth of knowledge literally at our fingertips through the internet.  The students that we are teaching have been raised with this phenomenon, and, as teachers, sometimes we just assume that our kids are able to successfully navigate the internet.  This is where teachers are wrong.

In the article, it states that digital literacies "allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then communicate the answers to others."   I don't know about you, but this seems like a lot to expect our children to know just  because they have been raised with the internet.  I know that most students with whom I work are capable of forming a question about a topic and locating information on that topic using a search engine, such as Google or Bing, but what next? There are very few students at Tooele Junior High who are able to employ a critical literacy lens to evaluate the validity and importance of the information found, fully understand the information read, and communicate the information gleaned from the internet in an intelligent manner to their peers.  If all students were born with an innate ability to do all of these things just because they were born in this technological age, teachers would be out of a job!

Luckily, teachers still have jobs because students still need to learn. They need to learn critical literacy!  They need to learn everything that Googles is not gold. Being able to read a text and comprehend what is being communicated uses the lower levels of thinking according to Bloom's Taxonomy.  Critical literacy begins when students are able to read, understand, and apply that understanding in a critical/analytical/practical way.

So, how can a teacher help students "bloom" when it comes to critical literacy?  I believe that the best way to help students develop the skills needed to successfully utilize digital literacies is to give them opportunities to use digital literacies in meaningful ways. Many times students are asked to gather information using the internet and paste their findings into a worksheet or research project, but we need to ask our students to do a little more. They need to have the chance to take the information they find and apply it to a real-life application.  How does the information they found impact their lives?  The lives of their families and friends?  The community in which they live?  When we can get our students to ask deeper questions, we will foster deeper understanding. For example, when studying the Holocaust, ask the students to look for information about the Nuremberg Laws.  Now, instead of asking students to summarize those laws, ask them to apply them to their own families:  "How would the Nuremberg Laws affect your family?"   In this way, students learn to find the information on the internet AND apply the information in a critical way to create a new idea or concept. Pretty sneaky, huh?  You know, all of the best teachers are spies/ninjas with special abilities to help students learn without the kids knowing they are learning. Oh, you didn't know that?  Well, now you do:)