Credibility of Internet Sites Block (6)

I went through adventure 1 and I have learned many new ways to be critical of the sites that I visit. I asked my three children who are in grade 6 and 7 to see if they recognized the hoax pages Marnie posted and all three did not know they were false websites. I recognize that we all have a lot of work to do. I feel that living in the North and not really having the opportunity to travel has really limit the vast amount of information that we receive which would make it difficult to recognize truth or false. We live in a world where there is so much information we do not know about because of our limitations. Many of my students have never even travelled to Prince Albert which would hinder their intellectual growth. They still believe everything that is said by people of authority as being true. One of the ways I can begin to teach educators about the importance of being critical is by talking about this information at the staff meetings. I need to continue reminding staff about the imortance of teaching the skills the students need to decifer information on computers. I teach in a grade two class and teachers are still very much in selecting the sites in the elementary grades. We can talk about the sites as not always being true but it is still monitored.
The parents need to be educated about teaching safety and monitoring children on the computer. This is of great concern because many of the parents are not educated about what is true and what is false. There is a lot of talk in my tiny community about people who are developing relationships on the internet and many people are worried about people who pursue these relationships. How do we ensure they are safe? Maybe if we educate the students, they will go home to teach their parents. One of the posts recommend that we teach chioldren to become information managers who will locate, analyze, evaluate and synthesize information and this is certainly true. We do need to create lessons and policies that will teach students about internet use.
As an elementary teacher I would like to use the directories that are created for children because they are easier to monitor when you have lots of children in the computer room and than students will need to learn about becomiung information managers when they are in grade 4 or 5.