21st Century Fluency

A while back, we spent some time looking into 21^st Century Skills.  While many organizations have come up with lists of skills today’s kids will need to succeed, the foremost organization is probably the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (www.p21.org).  This week we have been discussing not a new set of skills but an offshoot of the skill sets described by P21.  One of their four Student Outcomes is titled “Information, Media, and Technology Skills” and includes literacy within each subset.  I would place this week’s topic of 21^st Century Fluency within their broader category.

Coiro (2003) argues that there are key differences between fluency in standard text versus that of digital text we will find on the internet.  Among a list of differences, Coiro shows: “that Internet texts are often constructed with inconsistent features, pass through few editing processes, represent an infinite amount of links to related information, and are often designed to sell, deceive, or persuade young readers” (p 32).  These differences lend themselves towards a new set of skills students must have in order to find useful, valid, and accurate information in an ever more cluttered online environment.

So what are the specific skills that go along with 21^st Century fluency? After reading several lists this week I believe it boils down to two key ideas.  The first I will call Searching, and the second I will call Evaluating.  We discussed “Searching” a bit last week as we looked at how to maximize queries using search engines.  In addition to the physical search, fluency here also includes an understanding in how websites are designed and organized as well as how to maneuver in and around a site.  In terms of teaching, this is no easy task.  Whereas written books generally adhere to a set protocol, online texts have much fuzzier boundaries and much more artistic license.  This means that we cannot simply show students one way of doing it and be done; instead, it is a constant game of “click-and-go-seek” which takes time and practice.

The second aspect is what I will call “Evaluating.”  This is what we must teach students to do once they have found a site that they believe has good information.  This is a hard thing to learn, let alone teach, especially when so many sources online are intentionally inaccurate and biased.  Every expert has their own way of going through a website to determine its validity and accuracy.  For example, Philips (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011) recommends using the “ABC’s of Evaluation” where A = Author, B = Bias, C = Content, D = Dates, and E = Editor.  Working through this list could help students determine how trustworthy the site and information on it are.   I personally like November’s (2008) Get REAL acronym better.  In this, R = Read the URL, E = Examine the content, A = Ask about the author and owner, and L = Look at the links.  This is a little harder to remember for students, but open ended enough to work for whatever website you are dealing with.

In any case, 21^st Century Fluency is going to be an uphill battle.  As students are raised with more and more web access they seem to take the information they find at face value without looking much further into what it is they are reading.  Perhaps it is the “get it now” mentality that makes them accept the first links summary on Google as fact.  No matter, we must be adamant about teaching both Searching and Evaluating skills within our classrooms, despite our content area.  Furthermore, we need to get parents educated and on board with such skills so that they can work with their kids too.  This is not a skill set that one teacher can teach for an hour a week and think it will stick.  These skills need to be built in across the content and both in and out of school if we are to succeed in making the next generation digitally fluent.

Try Out Your Evaluation Skills On These Sites:

1) Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

2) Computer Tan

3) RYT Hospital Dwayne Medical Center

Resources:

Coiro, J. L . (2003). Rethinking comprehension strategies to better prepare students for critically evaluating content on the Internet. New England Reading Association Journal, 39(2), 29–34.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). A teacher’s perspective: Evaluating information online [Course Media]. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore, MD: Author.

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (2012). Framework for 21^st century learning.  Retrieved from http://p21.org/overview