3.2.5 THE ABILITY TOFIND AND SELECT

3.2.5 THE ABILITY TO
FIND AND SELECT
INFORMATION
Another dimension of digital literacy relates
to students’ ability to find and select reliable
and relevant information. This includes an
awareness of where it is best to search for
information and whether the internet, a book
search, or another method might give the
best results.
This is an aspect of digital literacy that
students often struggle with. When tasked with
undertaking independent internet research
many students are not equipped to find relevant
information that they can understand. Often
they simply find a website that seems to be
related to their given task and copy and paste
straight from the website into their work. This
raises concerns over whether students have
engaged with the content they have found and
over issues of plagiarism.
Students need to be encouraged to think
carefully about how to find information and
use sources selectively to help them make an
argument or carry out an activity. Developing
digital literacy supports good research and
study skills and vice versa. Being digitally
literate means critically engaging with internet
content and being able to judge the value of
that information for a given task.
This supports students to develop subject
knowledge by furnishing them with the
resources they need to become independent
and critical learners who can make full and
discerning use of the vast amount of constantly
updating information the internet gives them
access to, in order to further their learning.
Critical thinking and internet research
The ability to find and select information
involves students critically engaging with the
content of material they find on the internet and
relating it to the subject knowledge they already
have and are seeking to develop. This means
going beyond simply checking the reliability of
information by searching on multiple sites.
David Buckingham, for example, suggests that
young people can be supported to examine a
number of issues in relation to the internet and
he groups these under the following headings:48
_ Representation: how websites claim to
tell the truth, establish credibility and the
veracity, credibility and bias of their content.
_ Language: the user-friendliness and
interactivity of a website and how the
graphic design and visual images have
afforded those.
_ Production: how web articles are actually
authored and who uses the web (corporate,
political parties, individuals etc) in order
to persuade and influence, the role of
advertising and other commercial influences
_ Audience: who the website is aimed at,
targeted advertising, user interactivity and
how websites are used by commercial
companies to gather data about individuals.
Not only do students need to think about
how the information they are finding on the
internet relates to their research purpose and
questions, they also need to think critically
about issues of representation, language,
production and audience.
Fostering the ability to find and select
information in the classroom
Thinking critically about internet research
can be challenging for students and teachers
may find that they need to scaffold students’
engagement with the internet. Where internet
research is set as homework, there may need
to be some in-class discussion about the
skills of using the internet to find and select
information and the teacher may need to
actively design tasks and projects so that they
require students to critically engage with the
material they are finding.
At the most simple level, teachers can give
students information about how to construct
their web search so that they are more likely to
find relevant information. Students should be
encouraged to be as specific as they can and
to include several words rather than just one
when creating search terms.