Treading Water in a Sea of Information

I just began working with 8^th grade students in the middle of October. It has been over 7 years since I have worked with this age group, so I am a little rusty. I had forgotten how energetic some of them can be, and how lethargic others can be. I have also had a healthy reminder through my exploratory rotation classes that middle school students have to be reminded to question what is real and what is not. With our laptop initiative in place, they are given a laptop to use and take home every day, but they don’t have the reasoning skills to realize what is real and what is fabricated on the Internet. They are treading water in a sea of information, and they haven’t been given a life raft. They have nothing to hang onto.

That is where my class comes in. My class is called reading current events, but I wasn’t given any textbooks because they wouldn’t be current. Their laptops have become the huge seafaring vessels that move them through this sea of questionable information. I have to teach them responsibility. I have to teach them what is credible, relevant, and believable. Sometimes, depending on what subject you are looking up on the Internet, you have to move between the floating debris of biased information, the giant swells of relevant and purposeful research, the floating logs of propaganda, the whirlpools of lies, the dark water beneath web sites that contains hidden motives, and the tidal wave of search engine hits from all over the world.

They need to learn Internet safety, identity protection, privacy, and etiquette or they will be caught up in the perfect storm of online danger. If we don’t talk about social networking, online predators, and credit card theft, they will never learn it on their own. They are online all the time. They have cell phones that are faster than most fishing boats and more expensive than a yacht, but will connect to the Internet anywhere. They have iPods, iPads, netbooks, and desktops at home to sail the open waters of without so much as a lifeguard to watch. Yes, they have parents, but often they tend to watch from the beach instead of getting in the water with their kids. We as teachers spend more time with these new sailors in bootcamp, so we need to quit pretending they can make it through the Bermuda Triangle without drowning. (How’s that for a metaphor?)