Objective
Information Literacy Curriculum

Indicator
Candidates assist students to use technology to access, analyze and present information.

An octopus that lives in trees? Velcro that’s grown in fields, one for hooks, the other loops? Aluminum hats that protect brainwaves? Google can lead to some pretty weird “information.”

Unfortunately, not every teenager is savvy enough to distinguish between credible and not. I encourage students to question what they stumble across on the internet by directing them to search Google using the following terms:

• endangered pacific octopus
• California crop challenge
• aluminum deflector

The top result for each pulls up a bogus website with fake information – which leads to a discussion about how we can know whether to believe what we read. I follow up with an evaluation tool that helps students scrutinize both bogus and credible websites.

I go on to give students an easy way to circumvent the website evaluation process altogether: using online research databases such as Gale Infotrac, SIRS and WorldBook Online, which I introduce using a database scavenger hunt. I provide pathfinders for specific topics, and after students find the information they need I train them to paraphrase ideas and to cite sources properly. Finally I show them how to present their findings in proper MLA format through a two-page cheatsheet I designed.

From start to finish, I help students find, assess, and repackage information using 21st-Century technology – and they do it all while dodging the dreaded tree octopus.

Artifacts

File: Online Information Sources Lesson (PDF)

File: Website Evaluation Worksheet (PDF)

Database Scavenger Hunt Files (PDF):
Lesson
Worksheet

File: Chivalry Pathfinder (PDF)

File: Holocaust Pathfinder (PDF)

Link: MLA Cheatsheet

McDaniel College
Westminster, Maryland 21157-4390
410-848-7000