{"id":20050,"date":"2018-03-10T09:57:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20050"},"modified":"2018-03-10T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:57:08","slug":"teachers-aim-to-build-students-resilience-in-an-online-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/teachers-aim-to-build-students-resilience-in-an-online-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Teachers aim to build students\u2019 resilience in an online world"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might call it combating fake news in the classroom, but it is an everyday problem for local teachers.
\n\u201cThey think they are way more tech savvy than the old ladies,\u201d says teacher Ann-Marie Hulse of her students. \u201cWhen students are looking at their own devices for research projects, it is critical they evaluate what they are looking at. When you Google something, they only look at the first three things that pop up and never go any deeper. Although they are getting information in their hands, is it the best information?\u201d
\nThe answer, she says, is no \u2013 and she has the proof to back that up. Have you ever seen a picture of the elusive Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus? Chances are, you probably haven\u2019t, but a pretty authentic looking hoax website had kids delving deeper into the make-believe critter.
\n\u201cWe had them for a good 20 minutes before we let them know it was a hoax because it looked real, it had the links, but they were not being critical thinkers,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are taking things at face value.\u201d
\nMs. Hulse was recently at Regency Acres Public School for their STEAM Conference, a school-led initiative focusing on building \u2013 or re-building \u2013 resiliency and these all-important critical thinking skills back into the minds of students.
\nIt is an initiative brought into the Regency community by teacher-librarian Robin Morrison-Claus.
\n\u201cOur kids in this day and age, everything is Google this and Google that, and they don\u2019t have any critical thinking skills because if it doesn\u2019t come from Google, they don\u2019t know how to do it,\u201d explains Ms. Morrison-Claus. \u201cIt is really that resiliency and critical thinking skills that is the purpose behind all this. The mission is to get them thinking critically, to get them going through more than, \u2018If it didn\u2019t work the first time, I\u2019m done.\u201d
\nEven the younger students, says Ms. Hulse, are apt to walk away from a challenge, always looking to a teacher for the next steps instead of exploring and testing out new things.
\nAs such, the STEAM event brought together teachers and community leaders to steer students through projects designed to exercise these somewhat atrophied muscles, from robotics sessions, to D-I-Y kaleidoscopes, to sessions with the Aurora-based Brainy Games.
\nStudents\u2019 creative juices were tapped early in the day, however, with a talk with MDA\u2019s Natalie Panek, whose robotics company is currently working on a Mars rover.
\n\u201cWhen you\u2019re up in space a lot of things can go wrong and a lot of things go wrong all the time,\u201d she told students. \u201cYou\u2019re working with a team in order to improvise and come up with new solutions to overcome those challenges and obstacles in order to explore some of the farthest reaches of our galaxy.\u201d
\nSpeaking to The Auroran after her talk, she added, \u201cI think usually two things: one that it is okay to fail, that in life we\u2019re often going to run into challenges and roadblocks and it is important to keep persevering. The second is even adults don\u2019t have it all figured out. Kids will often see a rocket scientist or a geologist who seems to have their career in order and they seem to have it all figured out or are afraid to go down the wrong path. I think it is reassuring for them to hear that we\u2019re just figuring out our way, that there are moments we have vulnerability here as well.\u201d
\nWith three decades in education under their respective belts, both Ms. Morrison-Claus and Ms. Hulse say they have seen this problem increasing and they are determined to do what they can to stem the rising tide.
\n\u201cOne of the things we\u2019re hearing from teacher-employer is the kids who are coming out of schools and going into jobs is kids don\u2019t have that critical thinking, they also don\u2019t have the creative side of working through it because they are just so used to having everything given to them,\u201d says Morrison-Claus. \u201cEmployers are looking for places, kids and people who have those thinking capabilities, those processes they have to apply to do their job. If we don\u2019t develop it now, it is too late by the time they get to university those skills are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might call it combating fake news in the classroom, but it is an everyday problem for local teachers.
\n\u201cThey think they are way more tech savvy than the old ladies,\u201d says teacher Ann-Marie Hulse of her students. \u201cWhen students are looking at their own devices for research projects, it is critical they evaluate what they are looking at. When you Google something, they only look at the first three things that pop up and never go any deeper. Although they are getting information in their hands, is it the best information?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-08-11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5do","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 17:41:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}