Chapter 2: Research as Authentic Inquiry

"With user-created encyclopedias, university-sponsored websites, bloggers, news aggregators, and other new forms of content online, there's easy access to a wide range of information, assertions, gossip, rumors, and opinions. Not only is it important to be able to identify the source of information, we must also examine the quality of information we encounter."

To me, this is exactly what this course, and this M. Ed. program as a whole, is all about. As educators, we need to ensure that we are equipped with the knowledge and experience to be able to share with our students strategies that can help them be successful in questioning and critiquing the information they encounter in the digital world in which we live. They need to realize that asking questions is always encouraged, and just because you find something on the Internet or see it on TV doesn't make it true.

"We assess quality, credibility, and reliability by considering social characteristics of network environments. A person who has 5,000 Twitter followers is someone we assume is more credible than one with 12 followers. When Amazon or Netflix ratings show that a book or movie is highly rated, this is another type of social cue that serves as an aid to making decisions."

I relate to this quote because this is one of the ways I make decisions as a consumer when deciding which television series to watch on Netflix or which item to purchase on Amazon. I had never before considered that is was a type of social cue.

"Because the research questions were authentic and meaningful to them, students had fun with this project."

This is the simplest statement, but a very powerful one. As teachers our goal is to make learning fun for our students. It is a possible goal to achieve, and all it requires is taking the time to get to know your students and find out what sort of things they care about, and then planning lessons and projects around that information to foster meaningful learning.

I believe that memes support authentic inquiry and critical media literacy because typically, a meme is actually being used to question something (such as an ideal, a fad, or a social norm). They use sarcasm and clever images to inquire about things with an interesting twist.