Evaluating Internet Research Sources Introduction: The Diversity of Information Information is a Commodity Available in Many Flavors Think about the magazine section in your local grocery store. If you reach out with your eyes closed and grab the first magazine you touch, you are about as likely to get a supermarket tabloid as you are a respected journal (actually more likely, since many respected journals don't fare well in grocery stores). Welcome to the Internet. Information Exists on a Continuum of Reliability and Quality Information is everywhere on the Internet, existing in large quantities and continuously being created and revised. Getting Started: Screening Information Pre-evaluation The first stage of evaluating your sources takes place before you do any searching. Select Sources Likely to be Reliable Source Selection Tip:Try to select sources that offer as much of the following information as possible: Evaluating Information: The Tests of Information Quality Reliable Information is Power Source Evaluation is an Art
Project Gutenberg Project Information Literacy: Smart Talks Howard Rheingold: "Crap Detection 101: Required Coursework" Project Information Literacy, "Smart Talks," no. 5, January 3, 2011 Subscribe our Smart Talk RSS feed Printer-friendly version Photo Credit: Judith Maas Rheingold If one word captures Howard Rheingold's writing about the political, cultural, and social impact of new technologies, that word is prescient. In 1987, Howard was one of the first to write about the peer-to-peer power of virtual communities building collective intelligence. Not only does he detect change before everyone else does, but Howard also writes about the complex interplay of technology, society, and culture with clarity, depth, candor, and profound insight. We caught up with Howard in late December and shared some of Project Information Literacy's (PIL) latest findings with him. PIL: Since 2003, you have been teaching college students at Berkeley and Stanford. Dealing with the rate of change is also an issue. Your last question is a big one. Howard: Meet Buffy J.
digital learning environs As I walk the halls of my building I am delighted to see students and teachers using the technology we’ve invested in. My colleagues express the same sentiments about the implementation of technology. However, while it’s great to see teachers and students using various types of technology from tablets to 3D printers the same questions arise; is the technology being used appropriately and how can we measure the effectiveness of technology? So how do you know? Or how should you answer these questions. The best way is to make sure your school is implementing technology appropriately. Future employment opportunities will require students to understand and use technology appropriately. Those effectively implementing technology should see some or all of the following; 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. About Brian Brian Byrne is the Lower School Vice Principal at Shanghai Community International School (SCIS).
Crap Detection 101 | City Brights: Howard Rheingold “Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him.” Ernest Hemingway, 1954 The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge – the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part – the part a machine can do. Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research. The first thing we all need to know about information online is how to detect crap, a technical term I use for information tainted by ignorance, inept communication, or deliberate deception. “Ask a few questions and use available tools to see if you can find answers,” is what I told her when she asked me how to go about investigating.
Concepts How to Test For One Hundred Percent Truth - the 3 Emergence Truth Tests This article was written only months before I discovered the map of the mind. And while these ideas are still true, our standards for accessing truth have since been raised a thousand fold. More important, in 2010, I began work on a new scientific method, one with which discoveries are guaranteed. This method also contains a far more stringent test for truth. This said, this article is still important in that is shows the relationships between my work on mind and consciousness, emergence personality theory, and emergence therapy. It also shows how anything posited had (and still has to) test as true from all three prospectives; from the view of the mind, from the perspective of personality, and as part of a working therapy. On What Do We Base Our Three Emergence Based Theories? The First Truth Test - the Two Geometries (the meta truth test) Socrates had four main areas of study. Logically, one cannot fault Socrates here. Truth for Socrates was a much purer goal. Why this order? Steven
Lists Review of Net Smart: How to Thrive Online | Paying Attention in an Information Rich World Rheingold, H. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Critics of modern social media and our emerging hyperlinked culture are abundant. Critics warn us that Google might be “making us stupid,” as Nicholas Carr put it. At the other extreme are the cheerleaders. Until I read Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, I thought its author, Howard Rheingold, was a cheerleader. However, in this book, Rheingold’s position is much more nuanced, and indeed helpful, than that of either the critics or the cheerleaders. Here is the author’s own teaser for the book. Rheingold’s thesis is that the Internet can make us either smart, or stupid. Five Literacies The author proposes to show us five key information literacies that are essential to this task. 1. Should we be clicking on the Facebook icon? The answer to such a question is not always obvious. Similarly, should you be focused on your Smart Phone or watching your kid play soccer? 2. 3. 4. 5. Source: Rheingold (2012) p. 6.
Other 6 types of Questions you Need to Know... Learning is all about asking questions and finding answers to them. An inquisitive mind is one that goes beyond the status quo and probes deep below surface meanings. To foster such kind of thinking inside our classroom requires some hard work and a serious investment in time and efforts. We, as teachers and educators, need to prepare the right environment where inquisitive minds can nourish and grow. We need to water this environment with a culture of asking questions. Yes you can put it in your teaching plans for this new school year. Day In the Classroom - Capturing Kids’ Hearts Last week I spent three days in an all-day workshop called “Capturing Kids’ Hearts.” This workshop was paid for by my school district and was presented by the Flippen Group. Our presenter was Dr. Kate Cirillo. This workshop was designed for education. Build your social contract by asking four key questions, and brainstorming the words that come to mind. How do you want to be treated by me (the teacher)? I took notes as we discussed these questions. I will do the social contract again next year, but during the first day of the workshop, I was somewhat resistant to some of the other ideas in this class. The problem with taking professional development early in the summer, is you tend to lose some of your momentum and enthusiasm by the time you actually return to your classroom. The whole point of Capturing Kids’ Hearts, is that by creating a safe nurturing environment in your classroom, students will be able to succeed academically. The first step is to ENGAGE students. E – Engage
Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask 1. What can the URL tell you? Techniques for Web Evaluation : 1. 2. 2. 1. INSTRUCTIONS for Truncating back a URL: In the top Location Box, delete the end characters of the URL stopping just before each / (leave the slash). Continue this process, one slash (/) at a time, until you reach the first single / which is preceded by the domain name portion. 3. Check the date on all the pages on the site. 3. 1. What kinds of publications or sites are they? Are they real? 3. Expect a journal article, newspaper article, and some other publications that are recent to come from the original publisher IF the publication is available on the web. Look at the bottom of such articles for copyright information or permissions to reproduce. 4. 1. a. Type or paste the URL into alexa.com's search box. b. 1. The pages listed all contain one or more links to the page you are looking for. If you find no links, try a shorter portion of the URL, stopping after each /. 2. 5. 1. 2. WHY? More About Evaluating Web Sources
25 Best Websites for Teachers 1. Best for Young Readers: The Stacks At The Stacks, students can post book reviews, get reading recommendations, play games based on the latest series, watch "Meet the Author" videos, and more. 2. Use Scholastic's Book Wizard to level your classroom library, find resources for the books you teach, and create reading lists with the click of a button. 3. With hundreds of lessons for every grade level, you're guaranteed to find a colorful idea for your class, such as the "Chinese Dragon Drum" for Chinese New Year or the "What Do You Love?" 4. Establish a morning routine with Scholastic's Daily Starters — fun, fast math and language arts prompts and questions, including Teachable Moments from history and Fun Facts, such as "Before erasers, people used a piece of bread!" 5. The creators of the 6+1 traits of writing offer a terrific overview of the model on their site, with research to support the program, lesson plans, writing prompts, and rubrics. 6. 7. 8. Zoom over the Sahara desert. 9.