Host = Kristy Duggan
Guest = Dr. Beth Dobler
Host - The Teachers College at Emporia State University presents how we teach this. Welcome to how we teach this. We're talking today about digital literacy. Our guest is Dr. Beth Dobler. She is recognized in the teacher's college as the Johnny King Endowed Professor for 2022 2023 school year and recently was named the 23 row R Cross Distinguished Professor at Emporia State University. So back, would you please introduce yourself and tell us how you became interested in this topic?
Dobler - Well, thanks for talking with me. I'm always happy to talk about things I'm passionate about. So I started my undergraduate work at Emporia State and finished that several years ago and was a classroom teacher for 13 years. I taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, sixth grade in Gary County schools and then in Seaman Schools just north of Topeka. Then I came to Emporia State and started teaching in the graduate and undergraduate reading programs, and I also continue to do that now. And then I also supervise student interns at our professional development school in Topeka. So I get the chance to work with a lot of just beginning teachers, which is very exciting to see them coming into the profession. And I'm also really interested in this idea of how we as adults and then also as teachers, we prepare children to be able to, find information to answer the questions that are important to our everyday lives. And I take that as a big responsibility that we have as teachers. I was fortunate to take a year's leave of absence from Emporia State a few years ago and work at an elementary school in Topeka as a school librarian. And so I got to spend a lot of time working with kiddos and teachers on this process of finding information to answer our questions, because that's really a big part of librarians responsibilities. And so I was really grateful to be able to experience that on a daily basis. But it is something I'm very passionate about and helping teachers to really find effective ways to work with kids K-12 in finding information, and most specifically finding that information on the web and being able to do that effectively and efficiently.
Host - That's great. I'm really looking forward to talking tonight and what I need opportunity to get to go back into the schools and work there firsthand for an intern That's that's awesome.
Dobler - It was a fabulous experience.
Host - So I understand you've written a book and you use that as a textbook, but it also has a student workbook that goes with it. Tell us about that resource.
Dobler - Yes. The book is called Reading the Web Strategies for Internet Inquiry, and it's a book written for teachers to really kind of walk through the process for how we can help students. And the focus of the book is kindergarten through probably sixth grade, how we can help students to be able to make sense of the information that they find on the Web. It's tricky for younger students to be able to do that. So I've built in a lot of activities that help get children ready for that process. And then the activity book has some more. Kind of like one day activities that a teacher could or even a parent could use with a child to help them learn some of those skills of how to evaluate information online, how to ask questions that help get you close to the information that you're looking for. And so that's available. And yeah, I do use that in my class and it's on its third edition. So it's been around for a while and we've received some really good feedback from teachers about it as a resource.
Host - That's great. So we'll have a link to it on our website for our listeners that they're interested in checking that out. And then you've agreed to do two podcast episodes with us. So today our focus is going to be on defining this and talking about the value and the purpose and the why we need to teach about digital literacy. And you've said you'll come back for another episode and we'll talk more in detail about those strategies the teachers can use. Is that right? Dobler - Sure. Sure. I'll be glad to do that.
Host - Awesome. Let's start off with just defining our terminology. So I've heard information literacy. I've heard digital literacy. There's web literacy. What do these mean and how do these terms pertain to teaching students how to use the Internet?
Dobler - I like to think of information literacy as kind of the umbrella term. So it's the process that we use to ask questions, search for information, evaluate the information and make sense of it, and then share it with someone else. In fact, that kind of that brief explanation really stems from what the American Library Association use as a definition for information literacy. And they say that it's a set of skills that recognize when information is needed and to have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information so that information literacy can apply to any format of information books, magazines, brochures and the digital types of sources that we're talking about today. Now underneath that is what I would describe as digital literacy. And those are the skills that we need to use digital tools to find information, to create projects, to communicate with each other. And then kind of like think of it like a funnel and we go down a little bit more narrow and that would be web literacy And those are very specific skills we need to be able to find information on the web. So knowing the difference between a browser and a search engine or how to ask a query in a search engine and get really usable results, not 2 million hits that you have to kind of wade through, but get something that really matches what you're looking for. Also, how to within a Web site, how to find what you need. So how to use that little search box that's up in the right corner of a Web site? Or how to tell if the information on a Web site is true. Are the facts real or are they possibly made up or have mistakes? So being able to evaluate the quality of that information.
Host - That's all really important, having to find it. We all have our curriculum that we have to teach. I was a middle school teacher, so I was teaching content specific. And I know you've kind of focused on the elementary level, but with that, how do we justify spending the time on this when we have so many other things that we need to teach?
Dobler - You know, that is the million dollar question for teachers, right? There's just so many things that fill the school day. And often those activities involve something to do with the Web looking for information together. And so really teaching these web skills can be as simple as when you and your students are looking up an answer to a question such as one that I used when I was working in the library. Why do crickets chirp and how do they make that noise? And because we had crickets living in our library were being very noisy. So we looked for that answer together. And just during that process, thinking aloud as the as the experienced web reader about what you're doing and what how you're making the decisions that you're making as you go forward, how you decide what to type in that search box, how you figure out which links to click on and which ones to skip over. When you get to that website, how you decide where to start. Do you watch the video that's at the top of the screen or do you go for the text or do you look at the images? Just thinking aloud about that process you use is a great first step that that's where we all need to begin because we have those experiences that we can share with students for. Them they see us using our devices, children see us and they see us scrolling, tapping, but they don't see all the things that are going on in our head. And so until we can let that out, we can give them a window into our thought processes. It's going to look a little bit like magic, like you just kind of you like you type in your question into Google. Are you saying aloud to Alexa and you get an answer and then you're done. And there's a lot more behind that, a lot more thought processes that if you really want that deep learning. Sure. And you can find some quick facts, but that isn't necessarily going to lead to the deep and lasting learning that we want for our students. And so thinking aloud and then starting to build in some simple search activities for younger children, this could be the teacher making a list of possible sources for a topic or a question that you're exploring in class. I don't necessarily advocate, just open out on the Internet searching for young children. I don't know that they necessarily have the skills to really understand how to do that effectively and to stay safe on the Internet, because that is so important. And so, you know, sometimes we choose for them when they're just getting started or when they're younger readers, but we still give them the opportunities to click on the links that we find and go exploring the pre-selected websites. And then as they gain more practice and skill and understanding how to find information, then maybe we let them search using a search engine that's designed for kiddos. Like my favorite one is Kidle. So it's a search engine made for kids. Not like. Google, which is designed for adults, kidle focuses on filtering out some of the inappropriate sites that kids might come across. And it also presents like a very simple layout when you get the results. So there's not as much text to kind of distract young readers. So thinking about child appropriate tools that we can use with children is is really important because the Internet was not designed for kids.
Host - That's very true. And I will put a link on our website to that.
Dobler - Great. Kristy, sometimes when I'm working with teachers, they'll they'll ask, you know, how did you get on this idea? How did you get started thinking about this? And so I always like to share kind of my own story of why this is important to me.
Host - Yes, please do.
Dobler - And it started when with my own son, he was four and a half. And I was a single parent and I was frantically trying to clean the house to get ready for some company that was coming over. And you probably remember when your kids were younger, it felt like you just get one room clean and then they're messing it up behind you. And so I. I needed something for him to do so I could get things kind of straightened up. And so I sat him down at the computer and this was a few years ago. So it was his first time to be on the Internet. He had played some games at his childcare center, but had never been on the Internet. So I called up the Lego's website and just kind of let him try it and see what he could do. And so I'm over here vacuuming and kind of looking over my shoulder to see what he's doing. And like, he's figuring it out. He's figuring out how to click on things and to find things that are interesting to him. He he made his way to a space where he could actually build something. And pretty soon I gave up on the vacuuming. And I was just fascinated by watching him and thinking about what he what he was able to figure out and the skills he was going to need in his future to be able to read on the Internet and to make sense of what he found and to seek answers to his questions. So today he is 29 years old. He is a specialist in cybersecurity. So I guess all the technology stuff stuck for him.
Host - Yeah,
Dobler - But just that little it just kind of sparked a little inkling in my brain of I wonder about this, I wonder what makes this tick. And so then during my time at Emporia State, my research has focused on reading on the Web, and my studies have really centered around sitting down with children while they're reading on the Web and having them tell me what they're thinking about as they seek answers to a question. So one of the questions I used in a study was, what's the difference between a landfill and a dump? Now. That was a few years ago. Today you could type in that question and you would get the answer very easily.
Host - Right?
Dobler - But at that time, Google wasn't as sophisticated as it is now. And so you had to visit more than one website to answer a two part question. And so that gave them a little more practice. And I really got to delve into why they chose links to click on where they were helping. Those links would lead them if the links really led them there and kind of what kind of mental task that was for them. And so that was really fascinating to watch. And that added to that spark that I had and helped me continue on in this work. So it's still very interesting to me today.
Host - Oh, that's awesome. And the whole world of AI and how it's impacting our search on the Internet is a whole nother topic.
Dobler - It is a whole nother topic. And really, I see it almost as another search engine to help us find things. And so now we have to learn the skills to be able to use that tool effectively, just like we had to learn the skills to use the web effectively.
Host - That is true, because it can also give you back inaccurate information.
Dobler Well, yes, it's only as good as the information it finds online. So AI is not so good at evaluating the quality of what it finds. We still have to do that part. There's still a lot of thinking, which I'm glad about, a lot of thinking that we have to do to make sense of information.
Host - That's such a good point. We've talked a little bit about how to incorporate this into the classroom. You know, that concern that takes too much time to teach this. And you've shared that it really doesn't that if we just think aloud our processes and we are a little more intentional about what we're doing and our other lessons that we can make that work. But I still can't help but wonder if there's going to be teachers out there that say. Now, who's really supposed to be teaching this? Where is this in the curriculum? Isn't it just the computer studies teacher that teaches them how to use the Internet?
Dobler - Yes, I have received that question many times from teachers. The first way I respond to that is when we look at our state standards in Kansas and when we look at the Common Core State standards, there are elements in those standards that lead us to the importance of knowing how to find information and use it. So you can find that in the writing standards and the reading standards and being able to use digital tools, being able to access information and put that information to it into a format that we can share with others is built in to the speaking and listening standards. So it's all there. It's not listed as its own standard. There's no mention of web literacy specifically in those standards, but it does give us a foundation for teaching those skills. But then you still have the question of, okay, who who is responsible? And that's a tricky one, really. There's room for everybody to be a part of this process because it's complex. As we know, as adults, it can be a challenge to decide what is true and not true online and think about how that challenge is applied to younger children. And it's something we have to start early and we all have to work on together. That's the classroom teacher or the contact the yella teacher. It could be any type of a support computer or technology support staff that work with children. Definitely. The librarian is an important ally in this work and then also families. So adults that are with children. So that could be parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, people who are friends that have children, a school age. It's something that we all can work together to help promote because again, when they watch us, they don't know what's happening in our brain. They don't know the sophisticated thinking that it takes to find useful information on the Web. And so any time we can share that process with them is really helpful. It's so easy for us as adults to assume that kiddos know how to do these things right because they have devices, especially now since the pandemic, lots of schools have 1 to 1 technology. Kids are on Chromebooks or iPads or laptops practically every day and for large chunks of the day. And so it's easy to think, Oh, they already know how to do this. They already know how to find quality information and how to make sense of what they see and hear when they're online. But that isn't necessarily true. Just because they have a device doesn't mean they know how to use it effectively, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're having opportunities to ask questions and search for information and find that quality information. They may be using the device to read ebooks or to practice games or activities.
Host - Social media.
Dobler - Yeah, social media. So those are different purposes than what I'm focusing on, all important in their own way, but different and they take different sets of skills.
Host - So it is very possible the students could have been using a device since they were a toddler and still not know how to have good Web literacy.
Dobler - Mm hmm.
Host - Okay.
Dobler - Absolutely.
Host - All right. Well, that was one of my questions. You already answered it. So don't the students already know how to do this. We had so much fun talking about digital literacy that Beth and I have divided this conversation up into two parts, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss Part two when Beth talks more about the complexities that students have when they start trying to understand the information that they find on the Internet. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode and will subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. This podcast has been brought to you by the Teachers College at Emporia State University, featuring talks with experts and educators, addressing topics that can help you as an educator, a parent and a person We release new episodes every other Wednesday. You can get more information provided by our guests on our website. www.emporia.edu/hwtt. We would appreciate it if you could help us spread the word about the podcast. You can follow us and share on Twitter with @hwtt_esu. You can find us on Facebook. Just search for how we teach this. If you would like to be a guest on our show or are willing to give us some feedback, please send us an email at hwtt@emporia.edu. I'm Kristy Duggan, the executive producer. You've been listening to how we teach this. Thank you.