Reply To: Empowering Students to Inquire in a Digital Environment

[Elizabeth Hutchinson Participant]

I just wanted to briefly reply to Jenny’s comments. Thank you for pointing out that teachers are interested in your expertise in inquiry and not that you are a physics teacher. I really had never thought of it that way! If we become an expert then this is what they are after. If we are prepared to give it the time that it needs we will certainly become the expert that not only our teachers need but also feel more confident in what we are teaching.

There is so much to unpack here. Jenny your ‘what can we do’ list is very thought provoking and I can see many things that I have tried over the years listed here. I would agree that I find it difficult to read online deeply and do prefer to print out longer articles. It has also had an effect on my concentration levels of reading too. I find I have to allocate time to reading fiction otherwise I would just end up distracted by what I might be missing online. I wonder if our younger students will become more able to read everything online or if there will always be this divide with deeper reading in print?

I am also interested in the CRAAP test as I do think that we have probably moved on from evaluating websites this way. In some ways, a list of things to look out for is not always the best way to evaluate I feel as a website can’t always be judged this way. Unfortunately, it is too simplistic but time-consuming. An interesting take on this comes from Mike Caulfield called Getting Beyond the CRAAP test which made me think more deeply about how the internet has changed since such lists were created. I think what this shows is that school librarians have to keep moving forward too. I have often been caught out by feeling comfortable in my ‘new’ skill or tool, only to find out that actually I am now out of date and need to change my thinking or tool. I have to admit that I have yet to teach a website evaluation lesson without a list so would be interested to hear what a lesson without CRAAP would look like.

Finally, I am really looking forward to our Q&A on Sunday and am delighted to see Barbara’s ideas for our practical discussion.