• Nurtures students’ inquiry and critical thinking skills through the practice of more deliberate and disciplined ways of thinking
• Enables students to make sense of the proliferation of online sources, discerning misinformation and useless information from credible and useful information

• Empowers students to think critically about online information and make well-informed conclusions

Why CWR?

Well into the information age, we have access to colossal amounts of multimodal information in the online space. Often as we skim through online information, clicking on link after link, we rarely take the time to pause and gather our thoughts, to critically analyse the information that we see.

Guided only by our intuitions, emotions, or biases we engage in what Kahneman (2011) calls fast thinking instead of slow thinking, that which is careful, critical, deliberate and disciplined.

In the context of classroom teaching and learning, imagine if standards and models for thinking could be nurtured in our students? This is exactly what the Critical Web Reader has to offer.

The CWR enables students to:

• evaluate any web page
• discern credible, accurate info
• better understand complex texts
• develop literacy and thinking skills
• enrich subject matter learning

• monitor and direct their own learning

It enables teachers to:

• integrate Internet in classrooms
• organise & manage instruction
• scaffold student learning
• assess student work
• share resources with colleagues

 How Does CWR Work?

The Critical Web Reader web-based tool is an interactive learning frame that facilitates the use of real-world online material as a teaching resource.

Customising and managing CWR activities

Using the CWR web-based tool, teachers create customised CWR activities that frame the way students read and evaluate teacher-selected information on the Internet. Within the CWR is a teacher dashboard that helps teachers manage classes, activities and CWR lenses. The dashboard also facilitates easy sharing of CWR activities with other teachers in the CWR community.

CWR lenses

CWR lenses are learning scaffolds for teachers to shape CWR activities. A lens includes guiding questions, tips, and suggestions.

Teachers have the option of selecting standard lenses or customized lenses either self-created or created by peers in the CWR community (see Image 1: Standard and Customised Lenses). The lenses allow teachers to address critical reading skills and analysis skills, as well as develop literacy skills and conceptual understanding in their students.

Image 1: Standard and Customised Lenses

In the “Reader notes” section, students can input their responses to document and make their thinking visible. Through the CWR lenses, students work individually, in pairs, or in groups on activities in class or remotely from home.

Because of its versatility, CWR can be integrated into classroom activities and be used in a range of subject areas, such as Language Arts, Social Studies, Math or Science etc.

• Students were motivated and engaged by the use of technology in CWR. They were observed to be more self-directed, autonomous, and resourceful in the online learning environment.
• Students needed more guidance in the understanding of key ideas or concepts that were central to successful target skill development. To illustrate, while students were aware of factors used to evaluate sources, they were less able to weigh and use these factors to assess sources.

• More literacy scaffolding is necessary as students struggled to assess text due to inadequacies in comprehension skills and their limited background knowledge.

• Teachers selected increasingly complex online sources over time.
• Teachers’ skills at designing CWR scaffolds for students to evaluate and analyse sources improved as well.
• Teachers used CWR for procedural scaffolding (a typical approach used in Singapore classrooms) of source-based skills.

How Can Teachers Get Started?

• If you are interested to use CWR with your students, contact Principal Investigator Dr Mark Baildon.
• To learn more about CWR, view the CWR Tutorials!

Related Links

• Critical Web Reader website
• SingTeach Issue 52 Mar 2015 “Using Technology for Inquiry-based Learning”
• ReED Vol 1 2011 “A Critical Resource for Web-based Teaching” [PDF]
• Research Brief Series, No. 13-006, “Using Web-based Tools to Support Source Work and Inquiry in Social Studies” [PDF]

Further Readings

Read more about CWR in Singapore classrooms:

Damico, J. S., & Baildon, M. (2015). Rethinking reliability after students evaluate a Facebook page about health care in Singapore. Journal of International Social Studies, 5(1), 51-63.

Research Team

To learn more about CWR, please contact the Principal Investigator A/P Mark Baildon at mark.baildon@nie.edu.sg.

Principal Investigator

• A/P Mark BAILDON (formerly of NIE)

Co-Principal Investigator

• A/P TEO Beng Chong, Office of Education Research, NIE

• Dr Suhaimi Bin MOHAMED AFANDI, HSSE, NIE