Focus 580; I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online

Good morning this is focused 580 our morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack Brighton sitting in for your regular host David Inge glad you could listen today. Our producers by the way are Harriet Williamson and Martha Diehl and our technical director Henry Frayne at the controls. Here's a shocking revelation. American teens now spend more time on the internet than watching television. More time with the Internet than TV. What's to become of our culture. Well it's easy to joke about the decline of television but the rise of the Internet and its impact on our culture is no laughing matter. It's a great thing in so many ways but it also creates new problems and accentuate some old ones. During this hour focus 588 will talk about how young people are using the Internet and look at some of the ways this bodes well and ill for their education and personal development. Our guest is someone who spends a lot of time with people in the millennial generation so-called those age 13 to 24 who basically they're growing up with the Internet. Francis Jacobson Harris is the librarian at the university laboratory high school here at the University of Illinois where she has worked since the pre-web year of one thousand eighty

seven. She team teaches a computer literacy course for eighth and ninth grade students that includes a strong focus on informational literacy and the ethical use of Information and Communication Technologies. And she is the author of a book will draw from during this hour of the show entitled. I found it on the Internet coming of age online. Recently published by the American Library Association press in the book Francis Jacobson Harris guides us through some of the most relevant research on youth behavior on the internet combined with her own experiences. We'll talk about that and try to provide some guidance on building information literacy in the Internet age. During this hour as we talk with Francis Jacobson Harris we invite you into the conversation your phone calls or welcome on the air here around Champaign-Urbana the number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line anywhere you can hear us if you're listening on the Internet in fact 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 again we welcome your questions during this hour. And to our guest friend says Jacobson Harris good

morning. Good morning. Thanks for being here. Thank you. You start the book talking about teens in libraries and always a you know a very interesting subject the reaction of teens to libraries. And I think it's become a lot more interesting since the Internet has become such a big thing. Definitely definitely when I first started in the library our computers were dumb terminals that we had to boot up with a cassette tape and library skills were pretty much ho hum affair. Although So I would have to say the introduction of the Internet has made learning about the librarian about finding information a lot more interesting to teenagers. And we're able to to really relate it to their lives in a way that I don't think was quite possible before. You know a lot of people would say well with the Internet maybe there's less of a need for librarians What would you say about that.

Oh you know there's this. The top 10 list somewhere about this you know. Now that we have the internet why do we need libraries in there. The answers are things like well we could. Why spend you know two hours trying to find something on Google when you could look it up in a book in two seconds kind of thing. And definitely I think you know librarians are needed more than ever I don't see the demise of the book in any way shape or form. If anything it's more of a jungle out there than ever before. I think that the Internet a certain certainly taken some of the drudgery out of searching and finding. I mean I'm just as any teen what I'm going to sit down at Google and type in find looking for something very specific just type in those keywords and chances are I'll find what I want very quickly but if I need to know something in depth any thing that.

That's really going to guide me farther than just getting a quick answer. Then I am going to need a lot more than that. Well as far as I'm concerned librarians are the heroes of the Internet. I mean you know you're not taking away from programmers or people who develop applications and so forth but it actually seems that the librarians I know they are the most expert people at information tech using information technology. And actually you know for you know actual human purposes. Thanks I hope that's true. One thing I was telling a class yesterday is that there's this great thing out there called the invisible web as opposed to the visible Internet the visible Internet as anything you can get to through a search engine like Google but the invisible web is all that information that's hidden behind a database wallers or a pet is password protected. So as an example the lesson I was trying to teach

was on using. Online databases which are licensed by libraries that get you to quality information. For example an old back issues of periodicals you can't find those by just going to google it. The information is not there or even all the fantastic information that you can get say at the Library of Congress their digital collections of primary source images those are free yes. The so they're part of the free web. But if you do a search on Google you won't find oh say these old advertisements you have to search their database first and that's the kind of thing that librarians really work at keeping up with so yeah you're right. It's really interesting to note all the wealth of resources that are part of this invisible web like like you say and most people don't aren't even aware that it exists. One of the things I was curious about and you write about some of the book is the

purposes that people bring to the library. They're usually you know they wouldn't give an assignment. And so they need to find some specific bit of information or or something that could qualify as the right kind of information. And you know as you sort of describe you know they're there to get in get out as fast as possible in maybe not bring the same critical you know depth that they might if they really really wanted to understand the full topic and maybe that isn't different in the you know that age it's just easier. It is definitely easier. But I think one of the the things we like to do is is bring our teaching more or bring it more to the heart of what kids or people really want to know. And make it more part of their everyday life. Information seeking so that you're not looking up a random fact that you don't care about but you're looking up the random fact because it serves another purpose and therefore you want that random fact

to not be so random. And to address what you really want to know. Also I think people come to the library for non information purposes. They come to hang out it's always been a social space and one thing I did with the book was with the cover. There's a photo I took of kids in the library today. And then the photos that are around it in and here we are on the radio and I'm describing something visual but they come from all duty high year books. We found pictures of kids kids in the library from the 40s the 50s the 60s. And basically these are pictures of kids horsing around in the library to kind of show that. That that the library. Some things don't change that the libraries have always been used for more than just information seeking and

there they are spaces they're places even if they're virtual space. And so I would say the library without walls fits into that rubric as well. We're talking this morning during focus 580 with Francis Jacobson Harris she is the librarian at the university laboratory high school or we call it uni high here in Champaign Urbana at the University of Illinois. And she's the author of the book we're discussing I found it on the Internet coming of age online. We do have a call or maybe I didn't include them as quickly as I should have but let me mention the phone numbers again if you'd like to join us and I'll do my best to not talk on myself too long. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 around Champaign-Urbana toll free anywhere you Harris 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well sort of building on the last thing you were talking about. We're talking about information technology the Internet the Web etc. but you make I think a very important point that it's not just information technology these are information and communications technologies. Right because you talk about that.

Well kids have sort of two missions in life. This is a roundabout answer to your question. They they need to understand who they are. It's an identity issue and then they need to understand who they are in relationship to other people and with the community. And they use both information and communication technologies to do that. And unlike grown ups or or digital immigrants as Marc Prensky coined those terms digital immigrant and digital native they are able to mix and match those technologies. So for example my son told me once about a friend who I am to him research paper and I asked him to. I mean I don't think it was a full length research papers probably a couple paragraphs and said would you prove this for me would you read this so they're there mixing those Information and Communication Technologies and teens I think don't see a big difference between the two they'll they'll use all those things interchangeably.

We'll follow up on that we have a caller to get to but real quickly here you just use the term. I am a research paper. Now most a lot of people will know what that is but I bet there are people in our audience who don't even know. I mean I'm not a boy I don't mean to criticize anyone for not knowing this is how all new to a lot of people and a lot of us are immigrants. And I am definitely one of those immigrants I am is instant messaging. And this is where you would be talking in quasi real time online usually on a computer. Although there are other ways to do it and it's sort of the updated version I suppose of walkie talkies only you're typing messages back and forth to each other and one of the things you can do is transmit text or images right as well. OK well I'm sure we'll talk more about who I am. But let's talk with a caller. Someone from Indiana on one number for Good Morning comment which leads into question and then a question I get a call in as I I'm retired and

an ex teacher and all that good stuff. And I've been amazed at some of the family members younger ones who spend sometimes and. Total amount of time when all they had to do is pick up a book look in the index and go to page 67 and there is what they wanted to look for things. Usually it's you bring up too much information because you don't have the right string of words that would limit the search so that you would get maybe just 10 things that would help you instead of the you know 5000. So I'm wondering about that in terms of the general scope of just educating people. I sometimes wonder just what the Internet is going to do to some of those people in terms of initiative I guess is one question and that's the comment leading into the question and the second question is I wonder if you have any views on Google's great play to monopolize everything no matter who wrote it when they wrote it girl will.

Will they ever write it. And now I know there's a number of suits going against Google for copyright things I know this is a technical subject but. Perhaps you could give some view of it from your perspective and working with students and you know actually being a librarian. I guess those are two good meaty ones I think so far off. OK thanks Michael. I don't know if you saw that. I didn't see the actual issue of The Onion but there was a joke about Google planning to destroy all information that it couldn't index. I think that was Microsoft No I'm kidding. No joke it was a joke. I mean it. As to the first question yes as a librarian it's definitely very frustrating to watch kids spend huge amounts of time looking for information that they could find very easily by looking in a you know a simple reference source or something as simple as a dictionary even or World Book in terms of initiative I

think in a certain way they're showing it because they're very persistent they'll just keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. Which I find rather amazing. I think that that is a skill that works in their favor if there. If they're working on something that is more process oriented. But when you're just trying to find the answer to something simple it's kind of funny in the school setting. That's of course something we work on quite a lot. And I could talk for a long time about what how we handle it in the library in terms of creating online. Well web fees for lack of a better term and the kids will laugh when I tell them that I will slap their hands if they go to google first. In other ways though it works and I can't fault him for trying. And so it's just sort of depends. And and I would

say that if you don't find the answer in five minutes then cut your losses and go go the other route. The other thing that happens I think sometimes although I don't this is not addressing the caller's question exactly is that teachers will disallow certain types of sources like encyclopedias and I understand why they do that but sometimes you just need the basic information first before you can go to the next step. But students will actually avoid some of the more obvious sources because they think they're not allowed to use them in terms of Google. What's happening there I think. Probably the the latest hot spot is that Google is partnering with a number of large research libraries to scan their collections and they're scanning both out of print volumes as well as in print volumes. And nobody has any argument

or problem with the scanning of the out of print volumes and what you'll be able to do with that is search google find the books and actually be able to read them online with things that are still in copyright. And that doesn't mean they're in print but they're either in copyright or in print. You will only be able to read a snippet or two or three of the book. I think that authors are very concerned about this as are publishers because while people won't be able to actually read the entire book on line Google will have NEVER the last taken that that intellectual property they will have scanned those books and they will have the intellectual work on their computers. My feeling about it is that the more the merrier. Let him in the. It's also. For example the other thing that will

happen with Google Print is that Google will direct you to what libraries have those books. This is only going to increase use at libraries and I think the same as this would be my guess the same will happen with bookstores publishers people will be more likely to find these books. I see this is a transitional phase it reminds me a whole lot of when the VCR technology first came out and people were all worried the movie studios were all worried about that and instead they developed a new model. The industry developed a new model that increased had the effect of increasing the usage I think you know the devil is in the details and we'll see how it all works out. But I think in the long run it is a good thing it will increase readership it will increase royalties to authors. Hope it gets at the question. We're actually getting close to a midpoint Here let me just reintroduce our

guest again we're speaking with Francis Jacobson Harris author of the book I found it on the Internet the coming of age online talking about how young people use the Internet for for good and bad as a sort of a double edged sword certainly. But a lot of promise and potential in a lot of changes in what's going on. So if you have questions on that topic you can join us 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 for an Champaign-Urbana toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I'm certainly what is intending to raise copyright issues and maybe you will reserve that for a little bit later I wanted to sort of pursue the the question of the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on the ways people relate to each other in the behaviors that we're seeing. I don't know a lot of parents out there are seeing the same thing I am which is my 11 year old daughter. Designing web pages editing images in Photoshop instant messaging about eight of her friends at the same time surfing the

web. You know maybe the TV's on in the background but it's receded into the background. It's really she doesn't really care about television pretty much you know. And so all these these things are sort of a shift in the way people relate through electronic communication and the I guess the speed at which they relate and the number of threads just I can't you know I can barely you know talk to one person at one time you know let alone eight. So you know this is common in library comment and well you know that phrase. The expression information wants to be free. I think for a teenager information wants to be shared. And. Yet at the same time this is another one of those things that's not as new as it seems I mean I remember my mother yelling at me for having the radio on and talking on the phone while I was doing homework. Now they just have more stuff that they can do at the same time.

And it's also I think I think we finally figured out that it's not in fact isolating them. They're not going into a cave and just being on the computer all the time they're actually communicating big time with all kinds of people. Also I think they're a little they are they are more selective than we think they are. They've they've found ways to cut compensatory behaviors. So for example when they have six instant messaging conversations going at once they don't feel the need to answer immediately. Like you and I would where we think it's rude to not answer right away. There are these pauses that are built in and that's totally expected. They'll have windows minimize They found ways to compensate and manage all this multitasking so it's not as hard as it looks I suppose. Yes it is for us but I don't think it is for those

those natives. Well I think another concern that I've heard people voice is that it's a further shortening of our attentions. You know suddenly we're like doing all these things and it's just speeding up our culture. It could be although I as a librarian I feel the same way that I've for the last 20 years I've had to manage so many things at once that if I have to do something for longer than five minutes I've lost it. So it's definitely a it's a tradeoff. It's definitely a trade off. We have a couple callers to talk with so let's do that's we'll go next to someone in Champaign Urbana on line number one. Good morning on focus 580. CALLER There are Michael Pitt in my card calling on behalf of the Union High radio. Very cool. We were all listening to your show. And we're wondering what you have to say about wikis and other innovative forms of I guess it's a Web site something of that sort.

Excellent excellent. The Wikis are collaborative online spaces I think it's a Hawaiian word meaning quick fast. Something like that. And the most well-known Wiki is probably wiki pedia which is an online encyclopedia. I think Wiki wikis have tremendous potential actually in education environments because you can have what would be called a read write environment where people are contributing content editing each other's content. It's it's not a sequential medium it's a collaborative medium. In the case of Wikipedia because I mean I'm sure people wonder about that. That's exactly what it is is people just anybody creating this encyclopedia content on the web. And so it's really terrific for some things and really terrible for

other things. And. So for example if you go I would use Wikipedia in a heartbeat to look up a technology topic because those are the articles that are the most up to date in the community a sort of self policing. They'll keep it current. But if you use it for something that is potentially controversial and one example I like to show is the article on the Armenian massacre for example. That article if you look at the history of it and everything is transparent in wiki pedia as it is in most wikis. So that you can look at what people have the whole history of the editing process and you you see where there have been a revert wars. Somebody will write a piece and then someone else will correct it. The original person will revert it back to the way it was and so on and so on. Then if you look at the profiles of those authors and the way the people described themselves you you

have to wonder do I want to trust this information based on you know the 16 year old guy in Denmark has written this article. So I think it's one of those technologies that has fantastic potential I would love to see use of it for example at Uni ed at any school because. I think that it's a great way for students to use information that they get and created into something and share it. But the wikis that are out there you just have to be careful. Thank you very much. OK thank you Michael. Thanks so much for calling. Yeah Wikipedia just amazes me because and I don't know if people haven't experienced it they may not completely understand. Absolutely. Anyone can edit anything on Wikipedia and you don't have to. You don't have to log in or have some special software you get right through your web browser. And like you say on certain topics this is an

amazingly effective way to way to do things. And you can roll it back if somebody vandalizes a particular age then it can you know the previous version is still there. Saved you know and it can be restored. But the thing that makes me is actually a very hopeful thing that it can be people can collaborate and they can build something a knowledge base that is very very effective. Yeah it's pretty exciting really and it's it's very democratizing you know in that way. Well let's go on and talk with some more our listeners Next up someone in Savoy Lie number two. Good morning. You know I have. Are you doing good. You know we use the we use the technical libraries over to you and quite a bit. And there's a there's a major revamping of the chemistry library going on now and they're trying to go as much electronic as they can and they're taking many of these. You know like

the paper versions of chem abstracts you know they go all the way back and there are they're there of Scituate taken him out of the building and locking them up. And you know there's been a decision made by you know a committee with a lot of people's input but there's a lot of materials being taken out of the library and taken over to Oak Street and just locked up and then hopefully you'll be able to use the electronic searching mechanisms that they have in place which is to tear. Want to be only a limited searching ability will be available to the pub. And then there was a much more advanced searching service available to university people. And you know my We've used that library for many many years and we've always been able to find what we want in that library. And I will have thought the purpose of the library was to have the material in one place where you could

find it not necessarily go and hope that it's on a CD and then have to walk. You don't have to go all the way across campus to find you know if it's not there to go over to Oak Street and try and find it. I just wonder you know what what's your opinion on on this type of attitude. Oh these are hard questions because it's hard to have it all in today's environment. And that's what we want. We want to have it all. The online access at some point in time I mean this is another thing we try to get across to students is that not. And you're exactly right not everything is online and not everything is the way you want it to be online. I think that in the case of Oak Street I should probably explain that.

To the listeners this is the library has built a high density storage facility we call it Oak Street because it's out on Oak Street in Champaign and and it's it's going to house about eight hundred thousand volumes and I actually spent a week there at the beginning of the summer and I think I saw some of those volumes of chem abstracts that you're talking about. Yeah. They're not indexed. Right well there are I'm getting a little bit out of my element here because I think they they you can get to the index as I'm not sure if they're next to the actual volumes but I will you know I would probably have to refer that question to somebody who knows more. But I do know that they're making tremendous efforts so that it's totally possible to retrieve materials in fact everything that has been sent over there has gotten a first class treatment in terms of preservation and indexing and high quality cataloguing so that some of those things which

nobody even knew existed before will they will know they exist now that they are an Oak Street sort of ironic. And they have a nice reading room. Incredible climate control. I went into where the stacks are the forty eight foot ceiling or whatever it is. And Lisa gets up there on her on her forklift and can lift those things down. So I think it's going to be certainly less convenient in a certain way and other ways those volumes are going to last a lot longer and get better treatment it's a tough one though I understand where you're coming from. You know I guess you know we use that library for many years now. It in my opinion it's going to make it much more difficult to find exactly what you want. And and we've been we've you know we've been able to go over to that library and I don't care how obscure it is

we've been able to find it and now it's going to be in my opinion very fragmented. And and it's going to be very difficult to to find something that's very important. And the other thing I had going mention too is there's a lot of information really these electronic services they gave they just drop off a cliff after about 1980. And there's a lot of important information that's very relevant today that was done in the 40s and I'll tell you what it's going to be hard to track down. Yeah it's it's something that we have to work on and the industry has to work on. And yeah it's a problem and I wish kids understood that the there is valuable stuff printed before 1980. Well there's a lot more there we could talk about but we have a couple callers I want to you know include as many as we can if we're in a timely just quickly mention again since we're well past our midpoint. We're speaking with

Francis Jacobson Harris author of the book I found it on the Internet. Coming of Age Online published by the American Library Association books she's also the librarian at University High School here in Champaign Urbana. If you want to join us in the time remaining We have about 20 minutes left in this hour focus 580 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 around Champaign-Urbana toll free anywhere else. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a caller on London one from Slater Ville Springs New York. Cool. Yeah. Good. Morning Good Morning. I was calling to to mention something that you guys have alluded to quite a bit in the show but haven't talked directly about which is the need for critical reading and thinking skills when using any kind of media particularly the Internet because you can find all kinds of things using Google and other search engines but if you don't understand what the origin of the information or maybe the point of view of the people that are writing it you could easily be misled. Oh exactly. I could talk for many hours topic.

And so for me I think that's that's where librarians do become very important. And what we really try to work on a lot with teachers in collaborating with teachers. Just as an example the rest of this week I'll be working with our seniors on a kind of a media literacy project they're going to be comparing news stories. And one interesting exercise is to go to Google news and just type in a topic for example Iraq Israel which isn't in a way even a topic. But what they bring up as news sources is very interesting and I have to read their their information about how they define a news source. But you really get a gamut there. It's a huge range. I'd say probably a good chapter of my book is about teaching kids to

evaluate information whether it's online or not. But certainly the online environment is a very volatile one it's essentially the Internet is like a giant wiki pedia anybody can put anything there. I think that when you have kids publishing their own information online which they are doing more and more it's does give them a real insight. They they know right away that if they can put it there then anybody can. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they're they're good consumers. I have an exercise that we do with ninth graders called whodunnit where you they have to they when you do a search instead of like a library catalog taking you to a book and you can take the book off the shelf and the book has a title page and and a table of contents instead a search engine can take you to the middle of a website you don't know where

you are. So I give them several examples of websites and they have to figure out what that website is. Write a citation for it and it's a really really challenging exercise. I think the other thing I'd like you to address is the use of. The concept of free software Eben Moglen Columbia Law School attorney has called free software the largest body of knowledge in existence freely of I'm sorry freely available body of knowledge in existence which means that people can can access the source code and many many other tutorials and so forth so that they can learn without without any encumbrances. And I wonder how you think this fits into the transformation of the of the libraries and and learning.

Gosh you know I haven't thought a lot about that. I think it probably needs to fit in there more. I mean in other words I think that we could create better wikis if we are you talking about things like getting away from you from using standard software from big corporations. Well what I'm what I'm getting at is that proprietary software when you're talking about doesn't provide an opportunity for people to learn much about free software on the other hand provides. We'd opportune Right right right things of right. Right. Well yeah definitely and I think it's it's a way when you look at somebody's source code certainly that's how I help myself fix a web page. You learn so much more than you would otherwise and then everyone has an opportunity to improve it.

So I think we're just getting started on that path. OK well thank you very much. Thanks so much for the call. Another caller waiting on line number three uner banna. Good morning. Oh hi how are you. Good. The internet is actually an interesting concept in and of itself but when you're talking about the democratization of information and these repeated years and things like this where people can enter there and edit anything accessed information should be democratic for instance but it can access it but. When you have the content itself is democratic and you don't have critical thinking then how do you know what you're looking at it has any validity at all. You can even go into the scientific realm. You could go to you know opinion pages which are obviously you know everybody has the right to their opinion. But then it goes into the philosophy of his system ology which is the study of knowledge and ability of knowledge and of itself. And I'm all for democracy but I'm really leery of all these expositions about. Well anybody can edit this. Anybody can edit it right because the old system of where

you got a book and you have a group of editors and I would call them validators you know sourcing tentacle journals so that everything becomes open then it becomes chaos. Right. That's sort of what the Internet is now anyway as you say anyone with a computer and a web page or web browser builder web page builder can create it you know and that's why there are billions and billions of web pages but sort of over democratization which has a tendency to have a huge negative because their caller said something about you know people who need critical thinking that's one of my biggest problems with a lot of people I've dealt with and I used to teach. What if they didn't think about what they were looking at. As if likely accepted it because it was either written by someone or on a page or a book that had validity. Eventually there was no critical thought involved at all and I just I just asked my opinion about this. Thanks a lot. There will come a sickle. Yeah it's very true. And that's again that's why you need librarians. But

also I think that this is this is an important place for schooling in general. One of the things schools need to do is to bring a critical evaluation of websites into the curriculum in a very direct way. And so for example when we have Internet filtering software that that makes it difficult. Another thing that makes it difficult is when schools limit use of the Internet to quote unquote curriculum material only because that's not what kids are going to do when they're out of school. So I think it's very important. Instead within the curriculum to pull in. A lot of disparate web information and within the environment where kids where where you've got a teacher where you've got some scaffolding have kids do critical analysis of the

information they find online and don't just block it or just pretend that you know that's for somebody else to deal with we need to take it as an honest admission in schools. We're just about 10 minutes left with our guest Francis Jacobs and Harris discussing her book I found it on the Internet coming of age online. She's a librarian at the University High School here in Champaign Urbana and certainly has had a chance to interact with young people learning how to use information and communication technologies as we've been discussing. If you'd like to join us in the time remaining the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free elsewhere. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I wanted to maybe shift a little bit. There's a lot in the book and I'm sure we'll get to everything. But some of the other kinds of issues that you run into when you give people tools like computers and the Internet. And some of the trouble that people get into. You know I guess I'm talking about behaviors that we find. You know there's

sort of Quezon illegal like file sharing. You know people are engaged in perhaps violating copyrights and they don't they don't completely understand exactly what that means and have different attitudes about it. For example you know so maybe we could talk about that a bit. Seems like some people say well it's out there and you quote some some some students in the book. It's on the web. Yeah. So you know it's free game right. Right. And some of that is developmental. It's really hard when you're 30 or 13 years old to understand this idea of of intellectual property and ownership and and what it means in terms of of the larger issue of behaviors online. One of the first things we ran into I mean the stereotypes you have about kids on the Internet is that two things will happen one is they'll get to pornography and the other is that predators will get to them. And what we found out almost immediately was that though neither of those things were happening

at least as far US as I could see. But instead it was the way they behaved towards each other and. So we've spent a lot of time in class working on these intangible issues like intellectual property and like how to treat other people online or off line. We've even pulled our counselor into it because that's the reality when they go online there are certain barriers that come down there they don't they don't see the face of the other person when they say something rude they don't. There there are certain privacy issues that they don't get if you copy someone's instant message into someone into an email that you send to someone else or put it on your profile. What that might mean.

And so topics like all those ethical quandaries are I think also very very important areas for schools to get into and because they are developmental and they are persistent and they've always been there. Just like horsing around in the library has always been there but it's it's incumbent upon us in this age to include them in our teaching and learning environment. Well I was just going say it's a teaching and learning opportunity if someone's paying attention. Right. Well when they do if you tell them stories about themselves. And that's kind of the way with we if you and this is probably one of the things I feel most strongly about it if you say don't do it and this is kind of what's happened I think in some of the programs we've had in place for a long time like programs like dare or the abstinence programs where you just say

don't do it without sort of engaging them at a deeper level where they start thinking about who might be affected by these behaviors. So so what people are now starting to do is is more of a Socratic dialogue method where you really talk about these things and wrestle with the issues and if you make it really immediate and talk about this is what happened here and this is who got hurt. It's just totally engaging it's the best attention I've ever had from students ever. We have another call to include do that someone in Kankakee online number four. Good morning. Where is North Korea. No North Central Railroad and under the state 57 this is young people here. Access for accessing books refer to the sessions and to see young people. You're using the Internet for what he regards as truth.

Great for young people. Also for using the Internet for productive variable innovative things. Can you support his position in this regard. Variable productive uses. Oh completely. Well you know you heard it said that the job of a child is to play. I mean that's their work. Because when they play they that's how they learn. And I would say that for teenagers even when it seems like they're not not being productive. So I'll answer this by in two ways. Their job is in a sense is to socialize because that's how they learn how to interact in society and that's part of their job. But in addition to that I mean when kids are doing this

tremendous amount of multitasking they are being quite productive. They're there they're learning how to talk how to speak. I would probably argue the point with with anyone who says you know letter writing has died that in certain way I think it is had a fantastic rebirth with the use of e-mail or instant messaging and the way any English teacher could tell you that word processing is an example. Is has been it. A wonderful way for kids to learn to edit and to improve their writing. And then when you are able to share it with other people into using it. Communication Technology or in this this can be done in the classroom or not. Then you get feedback and so yeah they are there doing

all those things but they are definitely being productive. Well just a quick follow up to that and I don't know what kind of applications are in the library as far as like Photoshop maybe I don't know if that's a problem or the computer lab and things like that. But you know video editing and Audie you production kinds of software that is now you know really cheap and really good and people and students young people very young people are using the stuff and learning. How to tell their own story their learning narrative skills. They're learning how to craft art and storytelling and at a very young age in a very powerful effective way and that's that seems that's not trivial. No it's not at all I mean there they are creating content in a way that they never could before. And in a way that is very compelling for them. The motivation factor is quite high. Well we just have about two minutes left I wanted to ask you it's maybe as as our last question.

You write about learning how to see on the web you know information literacy we're talking about you know during this hour and so forth. There is so much to see on the Web there's so many I mean there are some dangers or some you know stuff that's not credible or perhaps even you know hate speech and things like that. Well you know what would you see in terms of how well maybe schools can approach this issue. Well yeah that's the point of the book really is that we need to teach kids how to learn to learn how to be and to learn how to see. And seeing is that that critical of valuation piece and where I think schools can do this is to. Bring the content in. Hold teachers responsible for holding students responsible for evaluating the information they use. And it's to not be afraid

of it I guess I'm turning it on the teacher now a little bit. That too. To not hide behind OK you can only use two Internet sources I think that's an irrelevant argument at this point because the distinctions are blurring. Information exists now in both formats and to get at the same time. To expect their students to bring. High quality content to their work and for students to be able to separate the good from the bad. It's the best thing they could be doing. Well we'll have to leave it there there's much more we could talk about. We're sort of at the beginning of this transition really. I mean in a sense. And so a lot are still immigrants to the information world but we will take that up I'm sure on another occasion and for now I will suggest to folks if you like to read more. The book is I found it on the Internet. Coming of Age online it is a recently published by The L.A. press the American

Library Association press and the authors of in August Francis Jacobson Harris and I'm sure it's in bookstores and libraries I guess I would hope. Certainly yes. Yes I know it's being used as a textbook in the library school here so I know you can get it on campus. You can order it from Amazon pay just can get it for you pages for all ages. So. OK. Thanks so much for being with us again. Thank you very much.