One of the things still not adequately covered in our curriculum documents, at least here in Australia, is skills associated with searching for information digitally. Teachers and curriculum writers almost seem to treat search skills and the understandings associated with ‘smart’ searching as assumed. This is a touch ironic, because in my experience many teachers don’t have advanced skills or understandings around digital search themselves (as I touched on a bit in my last post).
It is an indictment on our education systems that in 2013, these crucial skills are left to companies like Google to develop education packages for. Luck they do a fairly good job of it! (see here for Google’s great ‘Search Education’ resources).
The fact remains that there is no official guide for teachers for what skills to teach and when to teach them when it comes to digital search. (The closest we come in Australia is the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities document, yet to be formally accepted by many states)
So I’ve made one.
Digital Search Progression of Skills is a document I have written to attempt to define explicit teaching guidelines for both whole class and small group/individual students in a Primary School, as well as defining what may be reasonable to expect students to achieve at each ‘stage’ in their learning. I haven’t put grade levels on this document, as students develop at different rates. Also, students in a school that explicitly teach digital search from the students’ first year will have students with skills far more advanced than schools that don’t explicitly teach it, or treat it as a bit of an after thought.
Have a look and let me know what you think. It is certainly a working document. I don’t mind you using it at your own school, but please contact me to let me know that you are.