Creating student editors: if you're not reading the Web critically, you're not literate.

Creating student editors: if you're not reading the Web critically, you're not literate. HERE'S A QUICK THREE-QUESTION quiz for you to take: 1. How do you find out who owns a particular domain address or Website? 2. Besides a typical Google search Google is owned by Google, Inc. whose mission statement is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The largest search engine on the web, Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. , how might you find moreinformation about the author of an article that you just read? 3. What steps would you take to decide whether information youfound on a blog is worthy of inclusion in a presentation you arecreating? If you found it difficult to answer any of those questions,it's probably because you're still a reader and not an editor.And in this new Web-based, everybody-sharing-everything digital world,it may also mean that you're in trouble From a reading literacy standpoint, it's no longer sufficientto be able to simply make sense of the words, sounds and images that we"read." We have to get behind those words and images. We haveto do the work of the editors whom we have relied on for most of ourlives but who in many cases have been eliminated from the publishingprocess on the Read/Write Web. And we're not just talking aboutfinding misspellings or comma splices here. It's about recognizingand sizing up bias, evaluating the quality of sources and of writing,and digging more deeply by following links or doing effective searches.It's about our ability to contact primary sources to follow up, andto find and engage in the distributed conversations that are takingplace about what we read. Whereas we used to have a passive relationshipto texts, today we must be participants in those texts. With 200,000 YouTube videos and 2 million (give or take a fewhundred thousand) blog posts being published each day, we are swimmingin a sea of unedited content that, if we're not careful, canquickly lead us astray a��stray?adv.1. Away from the correct path or direction. See Synonyms at amiss.2. Away from the right or good, as in thought or behavior; straying to or into wrong or evil ways. . And in many cases, our kids are drowning. Takethe now well-chronicled example of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, also known as "Octopus paxarbolis" (which means, roughly, "Pacific tree octopus"), is a fictitious endangered species first published on the Web in 1998 by Lyle Zapato. site, which tells the sad tale of the endangered species endangered species,any plant or animal species whose ability to survive and reproduce has been jeopardized by human activities. In 1999 the U.S. government, in accordance with the U.S. strugglingthrough life climbing pine trees to avoid capture and being sold aswomen's head wear. University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut is the State of Connecticut's land-grant university. It was founded in 1881 and serves more than 27,000 students on its six campuses, including more than 9,000 graduate students in multiple programs.UConn's main campus is in Storrs, Connecticut. professor Donald Leu Leuleucine. Leuabbr.leucineLeuleucine. showed that fictitious site to a group of 25 middle school students,none of whom could discern the site was a hoax. (Twenty-four of themlabeled it "very credible.") [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Information Literacy Several conceptions and definitions of information literacy have become prevalent. For example, one conception defines information literacy in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and Many call this "information literacy" or "medialiteracy Media literacy is the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. It uses an inquiry-based instructional model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see and read. " and teach it as a unit in the second half of seventhgrade. We treat this new digital world as if it was an add-on to theanalog, paper world. But the reality is that for our student readers toreally become editors, we have to teach them to read as editors from thefirst day they are with us. We have to model our own reading practice tothem in early grades, sit next to them and deconstruct de��con��struct?tr.v. de��con��struct��ed, de��con��struct��ing, de��con��structs1. To break down into components; dismantle.2. what they readwith them as they get older, and help them create their own texts andpublish them as they get ready to enter the world on their own. These different reading strategies cannot be supported bytraditional reading instruction in the primary and secondary grades.When the National Council of Teachers of English MissionAs stated on their official website, the NCTE ( National Council of Teachers of English) is a professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. states that literacy is"malleable malleable/mal��le��a��ble/ (mal��e-ah-b'l) susceptible of being beaten out into a thin plate. mal��le��a��bleadj.1. Capable of being shaped or formed, as by hammering or pressure. ," that suggests we need to see this work not as anadd-on but as an important change in the way we integrate reading intothe curriculum. That all requires, of course, that we can employ these new readingliteracies in our own practice first. It means that we read bothtraditional and new media with a healthy dose of skepticism. It meansthat we know how to do a "who is" search to find out whocreated that fake octopus site. And it means that we are able to judge ablog by the information we can find about its author, the comments itreceives, its history, and the ways in which other bloggers might linkto it and write about it, not simply dismiss it because it's abiog. Will Richardson is an author and educator who also blogs aboutteaching and learning at weblogg-ed.com.