Digital Literacy and ICT
- advice and sharing best practice in using ICT across the curriculum.
Search Engines
Rather than always being confronted with a massive number of hits in response to a search request entered into a search engine why not try out a specialist search engine which concentrates on hits relevant to a particular interest?
Teachers directing pupils to websites must first test that website's content for reliability and evidence of bias as the information posted is not necessarily accurate and may not be suited to view. The sites included in the Pupil Pages have been checked but websites change ownership so they are not set in perpetuity.
The attainment target at Level F of the 5-14 ICT National Guideline in the Searching and Researching strand states "make critical evaluation of websites and search engines" which means that a teacher must draw pupils' attention to some websites which hold information contrary to the accepted view so that they are aware that the information is not always to be trusted.
Doing so also helps the pupil to develop an informed attitude (a strand from 5-14 ICT) to the Implications of ICT so that s/he knows and understands the positive and negative benefits of universal access to knowledge and the accelerated interchange of ideas and information.
Teachers can carry out this preparatory work by first viewing the websites being considered and ask some key questions such as:
- Who is the author?
- What is the source?
- Is this a personal view?
- Which sites are linked to the site being viewed?
These questions are relevant when one links from those sites with numerous lists of links as you leave the original recommended site.