Teaching Zach to Think

This article is about a boy who does some research online about the Holocaust. He comes across a professor’s website from Northwestern University that claims the Holocaust never happened. The 14 year old boy assumed the information must be valid because a professor wrote it. The article places an importance on teaching students how to validate information found on the internet.

Wow, what an interesting article! I agree it is important to teach our students how to find good information. The article states,” the most vital skills will involve applying knowledge to produce information and facilitate communication. And one of the most important skills will involve evaluating the resources you decide to use. As much time as we spend teaching kids how to find things on the Net, we need to expend 10 times more effort teaching them how to interpret what they’ve found.” I also like the part of the article where the author points out how to tell if a website is someone’s personal site, and I think this would be something valuable to teach my students.