filter this!

my friend and I have a new subject of conversation: online dating. we do some research for fun and try to understand the who’s, the what’s and the whereabouts of online profiles. she told me that her profile has no photo and bans all stupid lines as ‘hi, got webcam?’; plus, she can’t stand emoticons smiley faces that appear once she mentions some intellectual topics. bearing in mind she’s a professional and a lovely girl to be with, she tried to find someone at least interesting to chat to. first thing we do is filter the gazilion of information there, so her filters were:

1.single

2.aged 27-40

3. higher education

4.interested in: books

5. doesn’t want children.

Quite reasonable, honest filters, i should say, for men nowadays. The page display read: “We are sorry for the inconvenience but the search came with no results. The profile you are searching DOES NOT EXIST”. Then, she unticked the last two. Page started to load like that intro in Startrekk.

how do we teach our kids to filter information? in this day and age, we are constantly complaining that they don’t really know where to get that bit of information for the class because everything they do is copy-paste from the internet. the likelihood that we have a neat original piece of paper on the woolly-mamooth for example is null. i asked the kids how they get their info. are they using filters? what kind? where to they go to when they want to do some research on the saltiest lake in romania?

the point of asking our kids to come with an A4 with some pictures and some info written in times new roman of 12 as a project to be posted on the classroom wall is simply lame. nobody gets to read that anyway, they have no idea what to do with it other than read from it. i witnessed a ‘project’ where my colleagues invited me to visit their class. i said ‘ what on earth are you doing with these kids??” they were supposed to come to the front and read the bits and ends they found on some extinct animal. the rest of the class were playing under the desks, drawing, yawning, the speaker at the front chuffed at the end and rushed to his place after having read stumbling in words he never used. this meant an A.

fliters are paramount when it comes to kids. and teenagers too. this time we have no excuse. this time we, as adults, are in charge of their veering online mazes of  chunks of web pages ad nauseum.

i let my class once to take the liberty and write about an city/place that they find intriguing or that they learnt about from different sources. i remember a girl who had a paper on Sydney. she couldn’t answer my question “why did you choose this place?” she blushed heavily and smiled daftly. “i don’t know, teacher” she said. my thirst for knowledge abruptly quenched. I felt i gave them too much liberty.

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