Educating the Digital Generation

For most children today, Google seems to be the natural starting point when researching a new topic. The difficulty, of course, is that most content on the web is written for adults. As a result, young children often have difficulty making sense of any information that they do manage to find.

Luckily, Google has a hidden feature which allows students to filter their results by reading level. They simply enter their search term as usual and then click the ‘gears’ button in the top right-hand corner of the results page. This enables them to select from range of ‘advanced search’ settings, including the ability to specify the reading level that they would like returned.

By selecting either a basic, intermediate or advanced reading level, students will be assured of receiving only pages that they can understand. This simple step will save many minutes of ineffective ‘scrollerskating’ and frustrating attempts at reading adult-level texts.

It is also worth exploring Google’s other advanced search options. My particular favourite is the ability to exclude a particular term from your search results (For example, the term ‘Abyssinian’ but not the term ‘cat’, ‘Windows’ but not ‘Microsoft’, ‘Apple’ but not ‘fruit’).

For me, this demonstrates the big shift that is needed in how schools think about research. In less than twenty years, we have moved from a world where ‘knowledge is power’ to a TMI (Too Much Information!) world. These days, the key skill is knowing how to filter the mass of information available to find the one piece of information that meets your specific needs.

Just as children in the past learned the Dewey decimal system to find books in a physical library, learning how to use Google effectively is a vital step in becoming a 21st century researcher.

The days of teachers simply handing out worksheets are over (or, at least they should be!). However, there are now times when teachers will want to distribute digital material to students. Here is a quick and easy way to do it.

Step 1: Sign up for Dropbox

If you haven’t already got a Dropbox account, you need to sign up now! This fantastic free service lets you sync files across all of the computers, phones and digital devices that you own. However, that’s not all it can do!

Step 2: Save the file in your Dropbox public folder

Files that you save in your Dropbox public folder can be accessed by anyone with a web browser. This is the perfect place to save files that you want your students to access (Just don’t save your electronic banking details in here!)

Step 3: Copy the public link for the file that you have saved.

This is a simple matter of either right-clicking (Windows users) or control-clicking (Mac Users) on the file that you have saved and selecting ‘Copy Public Link’.

Step 4: Shorten the Public Link

You could, in theory, stop at Step 3 and give your students a link like http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6068864/Quick%20Start%20Guide.pdf

However, this is a bit cumbersome for students to type in. To make things easier, visit a link-shortening service such as tinyurl.com. These services allow you to create a link that is easy for your students to remember and type. Simply paste in the public link that you created in Step 3 and shorten it to something memorable like tinyurl.com/thatseasy.

You are now finished! All your students have to do is open any web browser and type in the short address that you give them. What could be simpler!

Dropbox picture under creative commons licence courtesy of flickr user pvantees.

It was my privilege today to speak to prospective teachers and education students at the University of Western Sydney’s EdFest. It is my belief that teaching our children is the most important job in the world and the unstoppable enthusiasm of new teachers is one of our profession’s greatest assets. I wish all of the attendees the very best of luck on their new career.

In my presentation, I shared my experiences using technology in the classroom and the amazing potential of these technologies to transform our children’s experience of education. Copies of the presentation are available for download from SlideShare.