After this week's reading I have to say I am not sure if there is more or less democracy or maybe we are just more aware of what is going on in the world today because of the internet. Listening to the video I started to think how can we truly compare from 20 years ago. There are so many opinions and even spin on data because let's be honest we can make data look like whatever we want and today with the internet we can google what we are looking for and find the information. We are not guaranteed to find confirmed information or supported statements but if we looked we could find someone who agrees with our opinion so I wonder often where do we stand?
I do not think we can find an answer to this and in fact I would say we are probably very close to the same as we were twenty years ago but we are more aware of things around us. Anything from politics to weather to stock trading and I think the younger we are the more comfortable we are with the internet and the more likely to believe what we read.
Adrian,
ReplyDeleteI think that the most valuable lesson we can learn from the Internet is to question all sources of information. In elementary school I was taught Christopher Columbus discovered America. Then some time later I read about Leif Ericson arriving here prior to Columbus and asked myself (but never my teachers) who really discovered America. Then in college someone posed the question, "How do you discover a land that is already occupied by people?" I think traditionally we are trained to believe what we read in printed texts, but the truth is, we can't always believe that either. We really have to question what is placed before us. It seems the Internet teaches us to search out the truth by providing us with so much data (often conflicting) and so many opinions.
Good Sharlene.
DeleteVERIFY, test and don't take it all as fact. We seem to keep coming back to that. What is the strategy then? HOW do we as educators do that? Where is the responsibility?