Overload of Information

I was reading the posts of my peers and realized how much information was taken into consideration for completing module 1 tasks. One thing I noticed was a lot of my fellow students used online sources. I thought about the use of online support to answer our questions and I began to think. There are many different uses of online support in answering our definitions. Some people used YouTube and blog based definitions. Other people used academic journals online. Some people used professional associations and online dictionaries. I know when I started the definition task, I used an online dictionary to get a feel for the dictionaries definition. After I had an general idea, I began reading academic journals about each of the 4 words we had to define. With all of this information available at the click of a button, I realized that I really need to teach student's how to research properly. I noticed in some of the papers students submitted during the year a lot of their research came from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a bad place to start, when completing research but not everything in Wikipedia is accurate. A shortcut I will teach my students next year is that at the bottom of most Wikipedia pages there are references with hyperlinks. I want my students to click the hyperlinks and read (this may be a challenge) the supporting information. After reading the supporting information student's can then determine how accurate the Wikipedia page is.
I also reflected on the fact that students have no excuse when it comes to not understanding a concept. At the start of last year, I advised my students that, if they do not like the way I teach a certain lesson, to go online. Online there is so much information available to students and there are a lot of teachers online who explain concepts in a variety of ways. I question if the ability to find answers to anything online has made our students lazy. My academic experience was right on the cusp of the internet. The internet was available in all levels of schools I attended but a lot of teachers I had were not comfortable with teaching students how to use the internet effectively.

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