1.3 Access, assess and synthesize information from disparate sources.
What does this objective mean?
The dialogue of education is a constantly changing, highly contentious, and ongoing national conversation. To teach successfully within the constraints of the United States’ Education System teachers must be able to analyze articles, survey results, new legislation, and other pieces of information effectively and implement this knowledge into their individual approaches to classroom instruction. This means they must be able to consider sources, including biases, read informational text to find important details, and gather information from across a wide variety of mediums.
Within the classroom, this objective also requires teachers to gather instructional materials from different, reliable, sources. While this might vary from supporting texts for a writing curriculum, to a variety of webpages for a web quest, teachers must constantly be challenging themselves to explore new sources and analyze new information objectively to form opinions, so they can communicate the importance of this 21st century skill to their students.
Why is this objective important to teachers?
Synthesizing information from a variety of sources, and using the results to form individual opinions, is a crucial skill for learners who will succeed in the constantly evolving global economy, and is therefore defined as a 21st century skill under the new, and highly contested, United States Common Core Standards. Regardless of the outcome of these standards across the nation, it is clearly becoming increasingly important for teachers to sort through the wide array of information sources available to find those which are most effective within the classroom, and most impactful when shaping individual opinions. As a teacher, my students will be faced every day with the flood of information provided by overwhelming access to the internet and developing technology. It is my job to guide them as they learn to sort through this information, so they can learn this skill as an educational tool, and a foundation for their lives as more informed citizens.
Supporting Documents
Example from my Honors Project
Example from my Classroom Blueprint