A Digital Visit to Finland
J. B. Laing M.A.
１．Introduction: The Importance of “Digital Citizenship” Skills ２．Education in Finland
３．Fine-tuning Searches ４．Metasearch Engines ５．Media Aggregation ６．Triangulation
７．Obstacles to Accurate Searching ８．Conclusion
９．References
1. Introduction: The Importance of Teaching “Digital Citizenship” Skills
If a mid-nineteenth-century schoolteacher were carried by the same time machine into a present- day classroom, except for minor subject details, that teacher could pick up where his or her late twentieth-century peer left off. There is little fundamental difference between the way we teach today and the way we did one hundred and fifty years ago. The use of technology is almost at the same level. (Negroponte 1995 Page 220)
Though the use of technology in classrooms may have become more widespread since Nicholas Negroponte wrote these words not long after the World Wide Web came into being in 1991, instructors still have a responsibility to ensure their students have the skills needed to navigate the ocean of digital information that has come into being. The recent rapid expansion of information has changed our global society. We are increasingly connected in ways that change the way we live. This explosion of information, in turn, has changed the way we interact with information and each other as well.
People don’t just use online search for homework or business intelligence. Search has penetrated to the quotidian details of daily life like finding a plumber or ordering a pizza. With location-aware devices, information is now available that takes into account where you are, what time it is, which direction you are pointing your device, and what your social network thinks-about it. If you have a smart phone, you not only can find the nearest place to eat vegetarian cuisine but also find out what other people have to say about the food and service, get visual and vocal directions to your destination from where you are now standing, and view a photograph of what the block you seek looks like. When today’s infants grow up, they will be amazed that their parents’ generation could ever get lost, not be in touch with everyone they know at all times, and get answers out of the air for any question (Rheingold 2012 Page16).
This paper will explore the use of tools that facilitate the gathering of information from the Web, allowing the searcher to sift valuable materials from irrelevant or bogus information. In order to do this, the educational system of Finland, a topic that has been of interest to many educators since the performance of Finland’s students has risen to the top of international rankings, will be selected to give a very simplified introduction to the basic tools of Digital Literacy. Digital Literacy skills not only enhance the ability of a person to verify whether or not an information source is trustworthy, they improve their ability to participate in society as well.
Digital literacies can leverage the Web’s architecture of participation, just as the spread of reading skills amplified collective intelligence five centuries ago. Today’s digital literacies can make the difference between being empowered or manipulated, serene or frenetic. Most important, as people who are trying to get along day to day in a hyperscale, warp-speed civilization that seems to often to be beyond anyone’s control, digital literacy is something powerful we can learn as well as exercise for ourselves and each other. (Rheingold 2012 Page 3)
Digital Literacy is a step towards becoming a Digital Citizen. It is important to use digital tools mindfully, rather than uncritically. One of the fundamental building blocks of being literate on the Web is to learn to employ search tools properly.
Authors, such as Howard Rheingold, have pointed out that one of the crucial requirements for living in an increasingly connected world is being able to distinguish fact from fiction, and further, the way in which people make use of digital media is important because the way media are used influences the evolution of media, and, in turn the formation of society itself. Rheingold is pointing out that citizens need to be more aware of how media influence us in order to develop media that serve, rather than enslave us.
The future of digital culture － yours, mine, and ours － depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives. How you employ a search engine, stream video from your phonecam, or update your Facebook status matters to you and everyone, because the ways people use new media in the first years of an emerging communication regime can influence the way those media end up being used and misused for decades to come. (Rheingold 2012 Page 1)
Your smooth new iPhone knows exactly where you go, whom you call, what you read; with its built-in microphone, gyroscope, and GPS, it can tell whether you’re walking or in a car or at a party. (Pariser 2011 Page 7)
Even before the Web, writers have pointed out that students are often ill-equipped to distinguish fact from fiction in media. This is of great importance to instructors, as well as those concerned with how society is evolving, and being evolved by, its media.
I said at the beginning that I thought there is nothing more important than for kids to learn how to identify fake communication. You, therefore, probably assume that I know something about how to achieve this. Well, I don’t. At least not very much. I know that our present curricula do not even touch on the matter. Neither do our present methods of training teachers. I am not even sure that classrooms and schools can be reformed enough so that critical and lively people can be nurtured there. (Neil Postman
Clive Thompson, in a Wired article, also notes that students lack the skills to conduct online searches:
Who’s to blame? Not the students. If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school. Under 2001′s No Child Left Behind Act, elementary and high schools focus on prepping their pupils for reading and math exams. And by the time kids get to college, professors assume they already have this skill. The buck stops nowhere. This situation is surpassingly ironic, because not only is intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving, it also offers a golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking. (Thompson 2011)
2. Education in Finland
Recently, Finland has been a hot topic in education, as well as political circles, for its outstanding improvement in its educational system. In the last few decades, Finland has made deep changes in the way the educational system is organized, and the students of Finland have improved their test scores to the extent that they are the top-scoring students in the world.
Finland has been a poster child for school improvement since it rapidly climbed to the top of the international ranking after it emerged from the Soviet Union’s shadow. Once poorly ranked educationally, with a turgid bureaucratic system that produced low-quality education and large inequalities, it now ranks first among all the OEDD nations on the PISA assessments in mathematics, science, and reading. The country also boasts a highly equitable distribution of achievement, even for its growing share of immigrant students. (Darling-Hammond 2010 Pages 164-165)
Using digital research tools, it should be possible to rapidly find out the key features of the educational system in Finland, a worthy topic to investigate how powerful digital tools can be. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written by online participants, is a useful source of information that provides a useful source of leads for an enormous range of subjects, particularly during the first stages of a research project. However, it is not regarded as a source that can be used as a reputable reference, and even the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has spoken out against using Wikipedia as a reference when doing research.
Speaking at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Mr. Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.” (Young 2006)
Even though Wikipedia is often discounted as a source of citable references, it does provide a vast store of information that is updated much more rapidly than is possible with print materials. It thus provides the researcher with a pool of very useful leads, as well as information that can eventually lead to reputable sources, on the Internet, as well as printed books and journal articles as well.
example of a wiki site, a collaborative project by internet users that allows easy input and online editing by any user (theoretically, at least). Because of this, intense debates have ensued about Wikipedia’s quality, reliability, accuracy, and policies. But remember that no other encyclopedia has ever had as many editorial eyes examining the content, and in contrast to print encyclopedias, Wikipedia provides an extremely high level of currentness. (Hock 2013 Page 152)
Wikipedia is an excellent place to begin a search, though, as stated earlier, a very poor one to end one. The Wikipedia entry for Education in Finland provides a nice overview, as well as several interesting leads to pursue. The entry notes that:
1. Overall well-being of the child is paramount, so children start schooling late, so as not to disrupt their childhood, and their basic needs are cared for before learning begins.
2. Education is tuition-free,
3. There is no tracking or streaming of students.
4. Programs are the responsibility of instructors and schools, rather than of a central authority.
5. There is very little homework assigned.
Other features of the education system of Finland are mentioned, but these six will be enough to begin our search for more information. Using Google, a search of “Finland education” ( two separate words without quotes) provides 36,200,000 results. There are a variety of links, including YouTube videos and blogs. One Guardian article looks promising. An article by Linda Moore gives an overview of the educational system in Finland. She begins her article by mentioning a book that has become of great interest since Finland’s students have achieved the top academic scores in the world, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland? Moore notes that, not only are Finish academic scores high, the gap between the top student’s scores and the lowest scores is very narrow.
Fully 93% of Finns graduate from high school – 17.5 points higher than American students. And 66% of Finns are accepted to college, a higher rate than the US and every European nation. Strikingly, the achievement gap between the weakest and strongest students academically is the smallest in the world. (Moore 2013)
Moore also notes that the cost per student is 30% less than that in the United States, so not only does Finland achieve much higher scores, it manages to do it more economically as well. Another feature of Finland’s system noted by Moore is the lack of standardized testing. Finnish students only have one mandatory exam taken when they are sixteen years old. Moore’s article is in agreement with the statement on the Wikipedia site that exams are not a prevalent feature of Finnish education. In fact, they are almost nonexistent.
After reading Moore’s article it appears that three features of the educational system of Finland stand out. There is the obvious fact of achievement, with Finnish students outscoring most students
in the world in most subjects. There is also the almost complete lack of standardized tests. Finally Moore notes that the gap between the highest and lowest performing students is very narrow. This means that even the students that get the lowest scores in Finland are actually scoring quite well.
Anu Partanen in an article in The Atlantic, points out that Americans interested in Finnish success seem to miss some of the major features of Finnish education. There are no private schools in Finland. Everyone attends a public school. Partanen notes that homeschooling is possible, but it is apparently rare. She mentions, in agreement with Moore, that there is little homework, and testing is rare.
Instead, the public school system’s teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools. (Partanen 2011)
Partanen goes on to mention that the emphasis in Finland is not on competition, it is on cooperation and equality, a stance that is rather the opposite of schools in countries like the United States.
And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Paronen: “Real winners do not compete.” It’s hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland’s success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation. (Partanen 2011)
The emphasis on equality mentioned by Partanen is also stated as being paramount by Pasi Sahlberg in his book Finnish Lessons.
Although this book focuses first and foremost on primary and secondary education in Finland, it is noteworthy that Finish higher education is one of the most equitable in the world. The Toronto-based Higher Education Strategy Associates compares equity-and equality-related issues in higher education in different countries. Its Global Higher Education Rankings (Usher & Medow, 2010) is the second iteration of a comparison of higher-education affordability and accessibility for residents in 17 countries. The study presents data on six different indicators of affordability and four different indictors of accessibility. The overall winner in both affordability an accessibility in 2010 was Finland. (Sahlberg 2011 Page 49)
3. Fine-tuning Searches
Most people searching for information about a topic on the Web begin by using a Search Engine, such as Google, in order to look up topics on Websites such as Wikipedia. Google is a very powerful search engine, and Google Hacks (Calishain and Dornfest) provides several ways of fine-tuning Google to achieve more powerful searches. A book by Randolph Hock (2013) also provides extensive information about searching the Web, supplying the reader with leads to several different search engines in addition to Google in order to search for even more difficult to find material buried in the usually unseen portion of the Web known as the Deep Web.
No matter how good you are at using web search engines, there are valuable resources on the web that search engines will not find for you. You can get to most of them if you know the URL, but a search engine search will probably not find them for you. These sources, often referred to as the Deep Web, the Hidden Web, or the Invisible Web, contain a variety of content, including － and most importantly － databases of articles, data, statistics, and government documents. The term invisible here refers to “invisible to search engines.” There is nothing mysterious or mystical involved.
Knowing about the Deep Web is important because the Deep Web contains a lot of tremendously useful information － and it is large. Various estimates put the size of the Deep Web at from 200 to 500 times the content of the visible web. (Hock 2013 Page 23)
After selecting a topic, such as the educational system in Finland, and doing some initial exploring using Wikipedia, the usual step is to use Google to find out more specific information and make some notes for further exploration. When using Google, rather than using basic search features, using the Advanced Search (accessed by searching using “Google Advanced Search”) features will provide a much more concentrated search. This is important, particularly in the final stages of researching a topic. The Advanced Search page allows the user to search for a specific range of dates, use particular combinations of words and search for exact specific phrases, allowing a search to be made much more selective.
There are also specialized commands that can be used by the searcher to pick out particular Web sites. One such tool is the Site command. If the user is searching for articles about Komodo Dragons, and wants articles published by Scientific American, the string (without brackets) would be: <site: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ komodo dragon> a string that contains the address for the Scientific American Website and the two keywords “komodo” and “dragons.” The Site command can be very powerful, as it allows a user to search within particular publications as well as “gov” and “edu” Websites.
If a person is interested in scholarly articles about a topic, then turning to Google Scholar will provide a highly selected pool of academic listings of articles, though some of these will behind firewalls that require the payment of a fee to read the entire article.
4. Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines, such as Mamma (One of the oldest － see Sherman 2005 for an article that provides several metasearch engines), Dogpile, Yippy and MetaCrawler, “are services that let you search several search engines at the same time. With one search you get results from several engines” (Hock 2013 Page 72). Hock warns that metasearch engines should be used with caution, since they sometimes limit the results to only a few links, do not allow the use of search syntax and often do not allow extensive searches using the largest search engines. Metasearch engines are mentioned here for the sake of completeness, and the user is cautioned to do some research before using them for an important search.
5. Media Aggregation
After a preliminary search for a topic by searching the Web, the next stage in information gathering is to select information sources and gather their RSS or Twitter feeds using a news aggregator such as NetVibes (also referred to as a Dashboard) or Hootsuite, to give some of the better-known examples. This allows the searcher to have information flow to the desktop, rather than going out and searching for it, and aggregating information flows is both efficient, and effective, allowing a researcher to monitor information flows on any topic as they happen.
One of the first steps any researcher should do is set up an RSS reader and select RSS feeds that provide current information about topics that are of interest to them. RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication.” It is a format that allows information to be broadcast over the Internet that is very convenient, for gathering and updating information on a regular basis.
The first step in gathering information using RSS feeds is to select a news aggregator. What results is a custom-made newspaper consisting of articles on topics of the reader’s choice. A news aggregator is software that gathers RSS feeds and displays them in a readable format on the users computer screen. Rather than go out on the Web to look for information, setting up an RSS feed allows the user to select news feeds that will stream information to the user. This provides an information flow that allows a very rapid overall view of specific areas of interest, keeping the user updated constantly with new information. Hock gives more comprehensive coverage of this topic:
Once more, the word “amazing” has to be used. To be able to read the headline stories from a newspaper 10,000 miles away, sometimes before the paper appears on local residents’ doorsteps, is indeed amazing. This chapter covers the range of news resources available (news services and newswires, newspapers, news aggregation services, etc.) and how to most effectively find and use them. (Hock 2013 Page 213)
6. Triangulation
Rheingold discusses the importance of “triangulating,” verifying information “by checking three different, credible sources” (page 79), and also gives valuable advice for checking the credibility of people before assuming what they are saying is true.
If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don’t stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step it to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar’s publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don’t trust just one source: triangulate. (Page 90).
One way of using Twitter to gather information to confirm that it is correct is to follow others with interests that are similar to your own. The more you follow and connect with other users of Twitter, the larger the network you are connected to gets. It then becomes possible to send out short
inquiries and quickly get answers from those who are following your twitter messages. A “hashtag” is another tool that allows a group to follow each other’s Tweets. A group can decide on a hashtag to use for sending Tweets that are related to the activities of the group.
Because Twitter didn’t have a native tagging capability, a Twitter user invented the “hashtag” by suggesting that people signal common interests by putting the # symbol in front of words － like #jan25, the hashtag of the Egyptian popular uprising of 2011. The San Diego Union-Tribune called publicly for citizen reporters to use the same tags and hashtags for their images of that area’s wildfires in 2007. (Rheingold page 93)
Information flows through Twitter rapidly. A well-known example is that of the famous US Airways Flight 1549, an aircraft that struck a flock of birds shortly after takeoff, shutting down two engines, requiring a crash landing in the Hudson River; a story with a happy ending, since all passengers survived. The first news of the event came though from smart phones and Twitter, well before mainstream news outlets, and illustrates the way social media have changed the flow of information and news delivery. The sort of information that flows through Twitter is of a different flavor than that usually found on news feeds. While researching this article, and trying out the hashtag #finland, I discovered that the first snowfall had happened in Finland. Several delighted people were posting the news of the first few flakes of snow. This sort of information would probably not hit the major news feeds, but it somehow creates an immediate sense of being involved in the news at a more human level.
7.Obstacles to Accurate Searching
If by “accurate” we mean that the user is getting the results that are most appropriate for the requirements of the task at hand, then there are factors that can return results that may not be the most useful. The most obvious of these is using the wrong search terms. This can occur when a user is unaware that what they are seeking is listed under a different name. To give one example, the scientific study of human movement (the field of science related to athletic performance, including biomechanics, nutrition etc.) is usually referred to as “kinesiology.” However, the kinesiology program at the University of Ottawa in Canada is referred to as “kinanthropology,” and will not show up prominently in a search for “kinesiology.” A search for “kinanthropology” gives just over 11,000 results. On the other hand, a search for “kinesiology” gives more than 12,000,000. More is not necessarily better, and it may be that the university offering at the University of Ottawa is more suitable for the searcher than programs listed under “kinesiology.”
A more serious problem is that Google results are now tailored to the user, presenting results that algorithms determine are more appropriate to an individual user, given their history of searching patterns. This usually means that links related to products and services that are likely to be purchased by the searcher are ranked higher than other results. This can obviously bias
search results, and the searcher must be alert to this problem, possibly using search engines other than Google to compensate.
Most of us assume that when we Google a term, we all see the same results － the ones that the company’s famous Page Rank algorithm suggest are the most authoritative based on other pages’ links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google’s algorithm suggests is best for you in particular—and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google anymore. (Pariser 2011 Page 2)
Pariser refers to the filtering of results for specific individuals the “filter bubble,” and describes this process and its ramifications at length in his book of the same name.
The new generation of Internet filters looks at the things you seem to like － the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like － and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you’ll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us-what I’ve come to call a filter bubble-which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information. (Pariser 2011 Page 9).
One way to compensate for selective customization of search results is, as Pariser suggests, “Stop being a mouse” (page 223). What Pariser means is that mice tend to get caught in mouse traps because they use the same path time after time. He suggests that people who search the Internet should not act like mice, but instead should seek out new territory, and explore unusual links, making it more difficult for algorithms to predict their behavior.
Another way of avoiding filters is to build a Personal Learning Network or PLN. A PLN is a network of people that share information. This means that, since each member has access to different information, and is given different results when using search engines, all members have access to a large pool of information that is diverse. In addition, as members usually know each other well, they can assist each other in tracking down information that may be of use. Daniel Tobin (possibly the first person to mention PLNs in print) mentions that members of his PLN responded to his request for information concerning giving a talk in a foreign country. In two days he had fifteen responses.
The most interesting and useful response came from a seminar manager in Israel who recommended that I avoid a common error made by American speakers in foreign countries -- he strongly recommended that I not use any golf stories or baseball analogies, because people from other countries are not generally familiar with those sports. This professional network has provided me with a great amount of learning over the two years I have belonged. (Tobin 1998)
Building a PLN allows a researcher to confirm that something is true by triangulating sources with others. A collaborative team, each using slightly different search terms, and subjected to somewhat different filtering, is likely to produce a much more balanced view of a topic than an individual researcher.
8. Conclusion
Digital resources provide rapid access to an enormous amount of information that must be navigated in order to be a responsible participant in our information society. In any research task, a broad initial approach, using large repositories of information such as Wikipedia, can serve to provide leads to more trustworthy information on Websites and in print media. This paper has given a very simplified example of how digital resources can provide information about the major features of the educational system of Finland, as well as suggesting ways of ensuring such information is representative and trustworthy by making use of various key-words to ensure comprehensive coverage, PLNs to circumvent filtering by algorithms, and finally utilizing print materials in order to establish that information is both current and reliable. Taking responsibility for establishing that resources are current and valid is a minimum requirement for responsible Digital Citizenship, and a skill that is essential for university students to participate effectively in our digital future.
9. References
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