August 2021- Dismantling the Evaluation Framework

@madvidgen Oh I know.. there is never enough time and many school librarians work on their own. I suppose it is about focusing on what is the most important. Recognising that some things are just not going to get done because there is not enough time. Maybe make a list of what you are no longer doing because you are focusing on Media and Information literacy and share it with your line manager. Your focus is to get yourself a library assistant but you need evidence that you can't do this on your own.

I would be really interested to hear about your new MIL curriculum. Are you using any of the FOSIL resources?

@Elizabeth Yes, I use FOSIL - we ended the year with a lovely Geography countries research based around the framework. In fact, I requested an Inset slot this September to speak about it our teachers.

@Magdalena Vidgen That is so exciting... I hope you get the chance to present at your INSET. You should also go on the FOSIL Group forum and share what you did with your Geography class. If you think you can then this is is where we should post it https://fosil.org.uk/forums/forum/inquiry-and-resource-design/

I have known for a while that both CRAAP & SIFT (to a lesser degree) were flawed; after enrolling for a SHEG (Stanford History Education Group) Civic Online Reasoning course I discovered that a simple evaluation checklist is not enough to decide on the source’s reliability. Websites’ owners/ developers are highly skilled in presenting facts in a way that they all would pass the evaluation test, but are, in fact, at best misleading. I liked that the authors put emphasis on the agency - information cannot be evaluated in isolation any more, it must be seen as part of a larger information ecosystem and must be seen in context of interactive Web 2.0. Students need to be aware why they see the information on their social media feed. After reading the article, I caught myself thinking that I’d used those closed questions in my instruction; after reflecting on the process I will now re-draft my sessions to include open-ended questions and utilise students’ existing techniques to make my teaching more relatable and based in students’ own experience.

@madvidgen yes I too was aware that CRAAP and SIFT were flawed but it is definitely easier to teach using such lists. However we do need to be aware of where to go beyond them. Yes I agree that it is getting harder and harder to navigate the internet. Finding the truth certainly is not as easy as it used to be. I think teaching how the likes of Google manipulate what you see is a great lesson to teach students.

I am delighted to read that reading this article has made you think about the way you teach. Certainly is a great learning opportunity.