NLP Annual Report FY20 - Flipbook - Page 18
School librarian: Checkology ‘priceless’
for teaching research skills
You might be surprised to learn what has students
buzzing in the hallways of The Bolles School, a
private school in Jacksonville, Florida.
It’s Jaime Sanborn’s Information Literacy course.
Sanborn, the middle school librarian at Bolles,
uses Checkology in a research-driven course for
seventh- and eighth-graders. She said that when
she learned about the platform from other school
librarians last year, she thought: “This is exactly
what I want to teach them.”
Checkology speaks the language of librarians;
“InfoZones’’ — one of the platform’s foundational
lessons — “is priceless. It is very similar to
how librarians would teach source evaluation,”
Sanborn said.
“Every child is being influenced by social media as
a source of information, not just entertainment, so
I have to teach them how to navigate that. They
believe everything they see,” she added.
Sanborn rounded out the Checkology component
of her course with the “Misinformation,”
“Introduction to Algorithms,” “Arguments &
Evidence,” “The First Amendment,” “Branded
Content” and “Understanding Bias” lessons.
Her students use what they learn from Checkology
every day. “They tell me that they have begun
applying these skills when they are consuming
news outside of the classroom,” Sanborn said.
Photo credit: Mindy Kelly, dean of students, The Bolles School
18
Annual Report FY20
