Isabella Fernandez

English III Honors Block 4

Mrs. Storer
17 May 2020

Takeaways from Unit 6: Distance Learning

1. What are your top three takeaways from John Green’s course, Navigating Digital
Information? Explain why each of these takeaways is important when conducting internet
research/using the internet to acquire information.

The three critical takeaways I interpreted from John Green’s course, “Navigating Digital
Information”, are the skills of sorting out the misinformation and disinformation from the
accurate information that is available to us through the internet, reading laterally in order to
understand who is sharing the information and its purpose as well as elaborating what is being
read in order to place it into the correct context, and learning from professional fact checkers as
they employ a variety of carefully honed skills to decipher fact from fiction. Each of these
takeaways are essential when conducting internet research and when using the internet to acquire
information since a vast variety of the information available to us on the internet may not be
entirely reliable and/or credible. We must practice the skills taken from John Green’s online
course in order to acquire credible sources of information when conducting internet research. By
sorting out the misinformation and disinformation from the accurate sources of information, we
can provide powerful information that is entirely efficient, as John Green stated in episode one,
Episode 1: Introduction to Crash Course Navigating Digital Information, “The quality of our
information affects the quality of our decisions, and thus the quality of our lives.” Similarly,
when we read laterally, we are able to identify an author’s reason for sharing particular
information, and their biased/unbiased point of view, when we don’t read laterally, we
essentially give misinformation and disinformation more power. Lastly, by using the skills
adapted from professional fact checkers, we are able to carefully process information by
checking a source’s credibility and source, in order to ultimately produce correctly given
information.

2. What are your top three takeaways from your time implementing the state’s social
distancing initiatives (learning from home)? Explain why this was an important idea to
learn.

The top three most important takeaways I took from implementing the state’s social distancing
initiatives by learning from home and respecting quarantine are the skills of learning how to
create a healthy and efficient mindset for myself as I distanced myself from school, work, and
my friends, the skill of learning to overcome procrastination, and reminding myself of all of the
essential parts of life to which I took for granted. I firmly believe that everything happens for a
reason, and when this strange occurrence turned the world upside down, I knew that the world
urgently needed this time to rethink our lives and everything we take for granted on a daily basis.
After just a short period of time staying in our homes, the ecosystems in the world began to
regenerate and heal themselves, producing new plants and reemergence of animals which took
place because of the clean environment from the lack of pollution we produce in our everyday
lives. I learned to enjoy the small details in life and remember the importance of strengthening
my familiar relationships. I began to connect more to God throughout this period and put my
faith in him more than ever. I can happily say that this time has helped me enormously to rethink
my life and my mindset.