Digital Badge #D- Chapter 5
By: Allie Sofos
In this chapter we touch on Information Literacy and Digital Citizenship. There was a section that I really found interesting that touched on the subject of e-readers called "e-books and e-readers." This section talked about the potential benefit e-readers can pose to students when it comes to their interest in reading. I found it especially interesting when a survey showed that 33% of students would read more if they had access to electronic books. I suppose I wasn't aware of the potential benefits of these devices seeing as I had always been a fan of actual paper novels. When they were first released I didn't agree with them and in a sense I still don't but if these little devices will get students more interested in reading than I am all for them. I like the fact that in the future there will be more advanced tools when it comes to electronic textbooks, such as animated flashcards and embedded videos. This was something I did not know was in development but I think it is an amazing idea. This will get many students much more engaged in the material and increase their understanding massively. I can understand why parents believe e-readers have a negative impact on children's desire to read, I felt the same way before reading then research shown on the matter. At first glance e-readers just look like tiny computers, which parents perceive as distracting but in todays society children want to feel technologically superior, owning an e-book will cause them more desire to read than not owning one.
The next section I found informative was the one on search engines. What I liked about this section was the large list of search engines they provide. For me Google was always the beginning and the end when it came to search engines. I was never aware that there were so many different ones for different materials (blogs, historical archives etc;) I even dog eared the page so I could use it as a reference to go back to. This section touched on explaining search engines to your students, I am sure that many people were like me and only considered one source as their information cauldron but the fact is that it is important to expand on students knowledge of the internet. Being aware of these other tools could greatly increase their access to all kinds of information but also increase the chances that it is coming from a credible source. Many fun activates can be created by using search engines. Asking students to look up one topic and find as many true and untrue statements as they can would be a fun lesson plan. It would help students learn about a topic but also show them just how many false facts are on the internet and how to differentiate between the two. This can be done through the teaching of AAOCC.
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| Photo Credit: surrealpenguine at Flickr |
The last thing I want to touch on was the "Electronic Note-Taking" section of this chapter. The reason I chose this section is because it is something I never really considered until I read up on it. I have always been the kind of person to use a pen and paper to take my notes (much as I have always been the kind of person to read an actual book) but like the e-readers this section informed me on the benefits of electronic note-taking. This section made me aware of a few useful websites, including NoteStar. These sites are great tools for students and teacher alike. They are wonderful organizers and are forever kept on record through the internet, there is not chance of loosing them or spilling coffee all over them! Another tool I learned about through this section was called "OneNote." OneNote is an app for Mac or PC computers that serves as an electric binder of sorts. This application allows you too house many different types of information and organize it however you want. It also allows for audio not taking so a student can just hit record during a class lecture and jot down important facts he/she may have missed before!
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| Just one example of what you can do with OneNote! Photo Credit by: gordonr at Flickr |
Great reflections and fun comic, too! :) I find it interesting to think about the issues of analog v. digital and amazing to realize we are in the midst of a huge transformation. The book print form is definitely a 'classic' and it is hard to imagine it truly gone, but I have definitely witnessed the change to ebooks among young people - especially those who are more self-described non-readers. I like them both for different reasons, but I definitely think the ebooks have a significant place and less than five years ago many people scoffed at the idea.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how you like One Note if you try it - there are others out there that I prefer, but sometimes I still grab paper/pen! :)