CMTC2006 - David Weinberger, New Sources of Authority: Who Can be Trusted on the Web?

(discussion session - comments from all attendees)

• old sources of authority are dying, new peer to peer resouces are emerging, how do we teach students to navigate this very very gray world?
• teachers often put restrictions on internet resources because they (the teachers) don't feel comfortable on the web
• the other extreme is teachers just saying, find it on the web
• example: part of an assignment is to print out three webpages that the students used and have them do a reflection on validity of those sources, justify their use of those pages
• traditional classroom model is teachers have control over the content they provide the kids
• David: there's sending kids out to find library like resources on the web, and then there's what they are going to do for the rest of their lives which is find blogs and their discussions - its where intellectual life is happening, where ideas are forming
• "students can now research and put together a paper without ever reading a word"
  
• "i think helping them figure out what is good crap and what is bad crap is much easier than helping them figure out how much crap is too much crap"
• david "maybe you need to teach them how to assess in 20 seconds. im serious"
• "I know how to do this because I'm an adult" "That's the hitch"
• David - "The safe harbors are the least interesting part of my intellectual life"
  
• David - "The form of discourse that they're being trained in is irrelevant" - down with reports!!!
• adults don't write reports, why do we make kids write reports???
• David, "every possible niche of trust is going to be filled"
• we've moved into an age of good enough information, librarians need to make that jump