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Learning Curations #1-4 link to the work I have already submitted for this course. The final learning prompt is addressed in Learning Curation #5, and the summation of this curation is under "final thoughts".

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As the topic of literacy is discussed, I like the definition that Alberta Education has developed: "the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living." This Learning Curation has enabled me to understand how acquisition of various literacies helps one acquire, construct and communicate meaning from text and technologies in our world.
(Posters made with Adobe Spark)

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The introduction and formulating an essential question

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Here is the link to my 2nd submission. The focus is on the library as a place of literacy and learning. Learning prompts from modules 2 & 3 are addressed here.

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My 3rd submission focused on Critical Literacy (learning prompt from module 5)

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This Curation, using the prompt from module 8, is divided into 3 Parts:
1. Why technology and tools are necessary for 21st Century Learning
2. A Toolkit of Technology Tools with some examples
3. Another avenue to promoting 21st century learning with hands-on tools: Makerspaces

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*My latest submission using the prompt from Module 12: Advocacy for libraries and Teacher Librarians.

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Summation of this Learning Curation

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(All posters on this page made with Adobe Spark)

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Prompt: Using all the resources to frame your understanding, represent what critical literacy is and how you see yourself using it in your teaching. You can integrate any resources you would like, or use any format but there should be evidence of the different viewpoints contained from the readings, including your own.
-It is an effective vehicle for teaching students to analyze social and unequal power relationships
- It is a way of thinking that challenges inherent meaning of information, and life situations
- It approaches learning and communication from a questioning and analytic standpoint.

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"By teaching students to understand and embrace diverse viewpoints and to consider underlying messages, critical literacy may help foster... creating safe and caring learning environments." Dr. Ginette Roberge
Promoting critical literacy across the curriculum and fostering safer learning environments.  What works? Research into Practice, Ontario Ministry of Education. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_PromotingCriticalLiteracy.pdf
There are some great curricular links to critical literacy in this reading.

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Critical Literacy in a learning setting:

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Critical Literacy in a learning setting:

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How do we teach Critical Literacy? I like these questions to ask students as we read a text.
from Dunkerly-Bean, Judith; Bean, Thomas W. Exploring human rights and cosmopolitan critical literacy with global young adult literature multimodal text sets.  New England Reading Association

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Using "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" by Jon Sciezka to teach about different points of view.
This story could be part of a great introductory lesson on seeing 2 sides of a story, based on the well-known "Three Little Pigs".

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Reading "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch to teach about point of view.
- We can ask students how the story would be different from Prince Ronald or the Dragon's point of view rather than Princess Elizabeth's.
- What role does a princess usually play in dragon stories?

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The Paper Bag Princess Please like us on Facebook for updates: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1610814619235657/ Lesson plans available for teachers as well!!!

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Using "Voices in the Park" by Anthony Browne is another story book that could be read with students to show one story from 4 different viewpoints.
Sometimes showing a video rather than reading aloud works better. This video was made with actors and is about 20 minutes long.
An example of using this resource: last year I used this story with a grade 7 class. We were discussing how witnesses of a crime may not all give the same details when interviewed.
- Why were the 4 points of view so different?
- Did any of the 4 voices surprise you?

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Uploaded by BARNES FILM ACADEMY on 2016-12-07.

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An example of some resources that aid in teaching Critical Literacy while examining Residential Schools in Canada
*This links to another padlet I created for a cross-curricular unit of Residential Schools in Social Studies and Language Arts.

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This post has SO many great ideas for teaching students about finding credible sources. Do scroll right to the bottom for some games about credibility to play in class.

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The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Source Credibility

A new adversary in the world of facts-driven logic and decision-making has been rearing its ugly head across our social media pages these days: fake news. It's a threat to education, and it is a threat to nurturing a knowledgeable society. Everyone from our celebrity elite to our President-Elect has fallen prey to the allure of sensationalist, heavily biased, and deceiving information online. And the trend is likely to continue. Although social media giants like Facebook and Google are doing what they can to curb the amount of false information entering their feeds, the lack of regulation around this sort of enterprise means we'll have to teach students how to better discern and become smarter consumers of information.

And yet, these things are new to us all. Education World has cut through the hogwash with this resource roundup, to give you all the tools you need to make sure your students can access the most credible and reliable sources of information for the years ahead.

The Roots of "Fake News"

The discussion of fake news often starts with addressing the role and function of satire. Satire is "the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues." And it has played a very important role in our political and social landscape. Unfortunately, satirical sites like The Onion and CAP News -which are intentionally and unabashedly satire, meant solely for entertainment purposes-are often mistakenly taken as genuine. Thus begins the problem.

Next, students should understand that some "news" is created with the direct intention of tricking the reader. In order to help students to understand the purpose of this sort of non-satirical "fake news" (past novel pranking), you might review this investigational piece by NPR that highlights the financial gains and other motivations associated with creating and spreading fake news. The report tracks down a fake news "godfather" and inquires about the shady practice. Clicks can yield some serious income, but as this interview suggests, they can also help to greatly sway political opinion.

That potential income associated with "clicks" online, too, seems to puzzle many. How can my online activity yield financial gain, even if I don't buy anything? This piece by TechTimes does a fantastic job explaining specifically how popular "clickbait" sites like BuzzFeed can mean real cash in someone's pocket. It's all about the advertising, and it's a fruitful business in our modern world.

Having said that, it might be worthwhile to have kids explore the nature of many of the most notorious "fake news" sites on the web. Have students identify the many elements that make these sites sensational and interesting. Analyze the images, the language, and the headlines. Here are some of the more disreputable sites the world has been monitoring as of late (be cautious about appropriateness of content before utilizing in the classroom):

These are certainly only a handful of the "mock news" organizations that spread like wildfire through social media. The Daily Dot also provides an annotated list of a variety of "fake news" sites that particularly make their way across Facebook feeds.

One might leave this exploration with a sense of "knowing better"-that no one with any brain would fall for these sorts of scams. However, the reality is that many people do. From "thousands of fraudulent ballots for Clinton" being uncovered to the NBA cancelling its "2017 NBA All-Star Game in North Carolina," millions of people-including some of our most trusted news organizations-fall prey to this sort of false information every year.

In order to model the reality that virtually anyone can build a web site, you might want to show students some of these hoax sites. Chance are good students will not fall for the deception, but they can help bring a light-heartedness to a very real-world issue.

This chart has been making the rounds recently in social media as a potential resource for recognizing political biases within popular news organizations. There's something whimsical about the chart, and surely its credibility itself is in question. However, it might be a good jumping-off point for starting a discussion with students about the potential for bias within the news organizations we are told to trust. The Pew Research Center has collected some interesting data around how much the public trusts their different sources of information. They also have some data on what type of news media the public consumes and what it says about their political leaning (and perhaps vice versa). Student News Daily has an excellent resource that outlines the types of bias to look for in mainstream media, while Forbes points out some of the major shareholders of some of these companies, rich for potential research into where the money comes from that keeps news organizations in business. All of this opens up the potential for discussion and inquiry, encouraging students to begin to look at even the most trusted mainstream sources with a critical, thoughtful eye.

Know Your Search Operators

To start, students need to know how to seek out specific and relevant information. Knowledge of search operators can help with that. Fake news sites tend to be vague, which allows for sensational statements. If students are detailed about the information they're looking for, they are more likely to get more thorough sources. Check out some of Google's search operators here and here, or check out the handy infographic provided here to hang up in your classroom.

"Generic Top Level Domains" are the top-level domain names of Internet addresses that identify them generically as associated with some domain class. Wha? You know the last three or so letters of a web site URL? .com? .net? That. These letters let us know a little bit about the type of source we're looking at when we find a web site. There are a super lot of these, but some of them are more common than others. Find an extensive list here (or officially, here), or check out this "cheat sheet" of the most common gTLDs and what they generally mean when assessing for credibility:

.com (commercial): This is the most popular gTLD. Originally used for commercial purposes, this is now used for almost any web site imaginable. Anyone can have a .com. Proceed with caution and a critical eye.

.net (network): Originally meant for network sites, this gTLD, too, is often used for many non-network-related information. Anyone can have a .net. Proceed with caution and a critical eye.

.gov (government): These sites are restricted to government use only. This is not a public domain one can simply purchase. Often an excellent source of statistical data.

.org (organization): This TLD was intended for organizations and non-profits. However, it has quickly been embraced by the general public. Be aware of the bias of the particular organization. Proceed with caution and a critical eye.

.edu (education): This TLD is generally used by universities and other formal educational institutions. Many research sciences will publish through their associated university.

Cross Referencing and Fact Checking

It's important to teach students that one source does not necessarily verify information. They should be cross-referencing everything. One way to do this is to use complex search operators (see above) to seek out the specific information found in one source in order to check if the data can be found elsewhere. The more trusted sites that use and support your found data, the more credible that data becomes.

Another way we can try to verify information is to use fact-checking sites. Many of these sites claim to be "non-partisan" sites that attempt to supply the truth to everything from urban legends to data cited by celebrities and politicians. The caution here is that many of these sites have been accused of being biased in nature, and many continue to be greatly scrutinized. Snopes is a popular fact-checking site, but be wary about letting students roam about the site freely, as it covers a wide body of topics, including things one might identify as "school inappropriate". FactCheck.org covers a lot of political statements, including the reporting of popular news organizations. WhoWhatWhen is also a great site for verifying historical information.

It's important for students to not only think about the credibility of the web site they are looking at, but also the ethos of the voices on that site. Trusting the integrity of a news source might be one thing, but trusting those being interviewed is quite another. As students are thinking about the sources relied upon by news organizations, they don't want to simply take their word for it: check the ethos. To get students thinking, you might discuss the differences between some of the following types of information:

1. Statistics or facts from a study or a survey: Studies are done to discover new potential facts...if these facts support your claim, it might be logical to believe you.

2. A quotation from a professional in a relevant field: People who have spent their lives studying your topic...their thoughts and even opinions are more trusted than your own due to their wealth of experience with the issue.

3. Reference to an historical event from an article or other primary source: An article that reports on something that actually happened in time, can be verified, and that event supports your claim.

4. A quotation from a person directly impacted by the topic: People who are involved with the debate in some way or have personal experience can be helpful in supporting your claim.

5. Something just said in an article (likely by a reporter, and the reporter is not a professional in the relevant field you are researching): News reporters are surely supposed to report the facts, not take a side on an issue. But if a claim is being made without referencing credible sources, students will want to be cautious.

A Finder's Guide to Facts

NPR has a fantastic resource to review with students when checking the credibility of your sources. Their " Finder's Guide to Facts " provides an extensive set of questions and considerations one should always address when they come upon information on the Internet. In particular, these questions get to the root of both bias and clickbait. The sample below might lead you to thinking about web sites in ways that might not have occurred to you:

Does the story attack a generic enemy?

Are you asked to rely on one killer factoid?

Does the news source appear to employ editors?

EasyBib's Website Credibility Checker

EasyBib provides a fantastic resource to help students to assess the credibility of the sites they are using. Typing the site they are questioning into the provided search bar, EasyBib will open the site with an added bar to the right, where students answer a series of questions that will guide them through the process of site evaluation. In short, it helps students to build the practice of what to look for, what to be wary of, and ultimately encourages them to make their own educated decision around whether they trust the site enough for use in their research. This site includes a wonderful guide to help students to physically locate the key information they need to be aware of in order to trust a published piece.

The Games: Playing with Source Credibility in the Classroom

Fact or Faux?: Supply students with a number of websites - legitimate mixed with complete hoax sites. Can they identify the imposters? Applying some of the tools listed in our "skills" section, have students try to identify which sites are not real. The better you can blur the lines between fact and faux, the harder the game becomes.

Trustometer: Give students a "site credibility" ranking system of 1 to 5 (or perhaps 1 to 10 for more advanced evaluators). Give students a series of web sites, each with particular strengths and weaknesses in their credibility. In a group, students must use reasoning and the skills listed above to rank each site and defend their ranking with what they've observed. This activity easily yields cross-team debates. The teacher might choose to award "points" to the teams that make the more persuasive argument.

The Tower of Power: Choose a debatable topic - something that will light a fire in your students. Then, find a number of web sites that take the differing stances on that topic (say, 5 anti and 5 pro). Have students rank the web sites, based on credibility: from the most credible to the least credible. Can students wade through their own feelings on a debate to identify which sources are more reliable (as opposed to those that support their personal opinions)? This models the real-world complication of personal bias.

The Art of Truthiness: Have students fact-check real politicians, celebrities and pundits. Show a video, give them a transcript, and put them into teams to try to verify statements made by our leaders and public figures with their own online research. Students can then follow up with a complete evaluation.

Liar, Liar: The goal of this activity is to have students attempt to "sneak" false or unverified information into their speaking or writing. This could take the form of a class debate or perhaps public speeches. Students may call out "liar, liar" when they think they hear nonsense. Students might earn points for calling out the lie. Students might lose points for being wrong about a lie. Students might get points for "getting away" with a lie. Adapt as you see fit for your class.

Written and compiled by Keith Lambert, Education World Associate Contributing Editor

Lambert is an English / Language Arts teacher in Connecticut.

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The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Source Credibility | Education World

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The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Source Credibility A new adversary in the world of facts-driven logic and decision-making has been rearing its ugly head across our social media pages these days: fake news. It's a threat to education, and it is a threat to nurturing a knowledgeable society.

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Teaching students to critically assess sources of information

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Teaching students to critically assess sources of information

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This short video from our module 5 readings asks some very good questions to teach students about sources of information on the web

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Global Conversations in Literacy Research

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This presentation will represent a learning activity to facilitate a student's critical literacy when using social media ( individual presentation - Mathews, Dana ). -- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free.

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EasyBib has a helpful site to evaluate credibility of sources. There are 11 slides to refer to.

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Can't view in your browser? Download the file

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Teaching students to critically read from the Web

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Teaching students to critically read from the Web

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I had not heard of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus hoax until this module.
From our discussion post and an online search, many educators use this site to teach students about finding credible sources for information gathering. There are many hoaxes, altered photos and altered facts online that can be used to teach students to read critically.

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Help Save The ENDANGERED

From EXTINCTION!

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus
(Enhanced from cropped telephoto)

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus ( Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Route 101, separating the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species-including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker-were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

While efforts were made in the past to preserve remaining tree octopus habitat, these were met with resistance by the timber industry, which has traditionally viewed the tree octopus as a nuisance, both because the octopuses favor the valuable, moss-shrouded trees of old growth forests-pitting conservation needs against lucrative sources of lumber-and because octopuses hiding among felled trees often gummed up sawmills and stained pulp vats with their ink.

Traveling sideshow exhibits, such as this one by Glen "Bones" Hartzell from 1942, demonized tree octopuses to the ignorant masses
(Click to enlarge)

These nuisances led many loggers to regard tree octopuses as bad luck, resulting in the pointless killing of octopuses on sight at logging camps in a misguided attempt at eradicating the troublesome species. Anti-octopus sentiment was so strong among loggers that some even began to fear that the octopuses were prone to attacking humans.

These fears were fueled in no small part by gratuitous stories involving tree octopuses harassing lumberjacks and distressing damsels in Northwestern-themed pulp magazines of the 1930-40s and variously "nipping", "entangling", or "suckering the flesh" of the heroes of men's action magazines of the 1950-60s. (The magazine publishers depended on cheap paper made from wood pulp and were glad to contribute to the anti-octopus propaganda campaign of the timber industry.)

To this day, misunderstanding and fear of these gentle creatures can still be found among many old timers, although education campaigns-and special octopus-separators installed at sawmills-have largely halted the practice of tree octopus eradication.

How You Can Help

More Tree Octopus Information

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

Tree Octopus FAQs - Frequently asked questions, now with answers.

Tree Octopus Sightings - Includes photos of and behavioral research on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other tree octopus species.

Tree Octopus In The Media - appearances of tree octopuses, both real and fictional, in the media and popular culture.

Research On Other Tree Octopus Species:

The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato.
This site is not associated with any school or educational organization,
other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.

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Information about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and what you can do to save it.

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Critical Literacy & Global Citizenship: an example

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Critical Literacy & Global Citizenship: an example

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A Norwegian web series called "Sweatshop: Deadly Fashion" helps students see how our actions as consumers impact people in developing nations.
This was a series I used with a grade 6 Social Studies class as we finished our study of Global Citizenship. This series includes 5 x 10 minute episodes. It was very interesting to watch 3 Norwegian teens encounter injustice, and question their role in this injustice.
My students asked a lot of very good questions, ultimately, "Now that we know, what do we do with this information?"

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As educators, we need to be so careful with our influence. We are not to force students to conform to the "right ideas". We must shine a light on injustices, and teach our students to question, to analyze, to investigate, but we must respect their voice.
This quotation can be found in Dennis Hayes article at https://io9.gizmodo.com/lets-stop-trying-to-teach-students-critical-thinking-1618729143