A Stage 3 classroom teacher entered the library the other week, wanting to borrow a few junior non-fiction texts for a low-ability student. The class was conducting online research for a writing task and the teacher was complaining that the student “couldn’t even do a simple Google search” and thus, the books were the alternative. It all came together for me as a lightbulb moment in that seemingly innocent passing comment. Of course he wasn’t able to undertake a useful and productive search. Of course he wasn’t going to be able to read and understand the information on the sites he came across. Of course he was going to be distracted by the colourful flashy ads that were purposely designed to distract him. Of course he wasn’t going to be able to successfully complete the task!
I mean, if I myself as an information-seeking professional have struggled to find web-based resources to utilise for teaching and learning purposes, how on earth could this student do it independently? He doesn’t even stand a chance! How can we expect students to be able to just ‘do’, if they haven’t been given the appropriate tools to do so. Looking forward to Assessment 2, it is a good starting point to be able to develop web-based resource to offer a carefully curated collection of online resources for student use, whilst explicitly teaching students how to use these tools successfully through digital and information literacy upskilling. This allows students to gain increasing confidence and independence in a supported and guided way, which allows them to feel in control of their own learning also.