The digital age presents us with unprecedented problems when it comes to finding information and making sure that it’s true. Where our first problem used to be getting information, what’s more difficult today is filtering out what we need from what we don’t.

Getting the Toothpaste Back into the Tube: A Lesson on Online Information (Grades 6-8) In this lesson, students watch a short video that compares getting rid of personal information online to getting toothpaste back into a tube. Through the video and a series of short scenarios, students learn the five principles of information online: that information online is permanent, can be copied, can be seen by unintended audiences, can be seen by larger audiences than intended, and that it becomes searchable.