We are fortunate to live in a time when information is just a few finger taps away. However easily accessible information is not necessarily correct or free, even if it appears that way.
Parents need to know that while "just googling" an answer may be quick and easy, it is not always the best strategy for students, even more so if they are still in elementary school and their ability to filter information may not be well developed. It is often said that “getting information from the internet is like trying to sip water from a fire hydrant”.
Here at WAB we subscribe to a number of online resources that help guide students to age and reading / understanding-level appropriate materials. You can find links to these here:
We teach students how to create searches that are more likely to result in a correct and appropriate response. For some family fun, you could try the "google a day challenge" with your children. It is worth watching this Crash Course series of videos by John Green explaining how to navigate information online.
Students undertaking research should remember the power of a conversation with a school librarian. Besides curating resources to support units of inquiry and independent research, the teacher librarians assist with teaching information literacy. For more information the WAB librarians John Byrne (ES), Nadine Bailey (MS) and Jeri Hurd (HS) are available for consultation.
Common Sense Media is an excellent source of advice and resources for parenting in the digital age.
Prepared by Nadine Bailey, Stephen Taylor & Doug Taylor for the Parents & Faculty of Western Academy, Beijing.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
