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.
Assessing the credibility of online sources - Webcredible UX blog As online technology rapidly develops, the criteria for evaluating these sources develops as well. Online sources are so new that their status as accurate sources is not fully established; therefore, you should verify online sources before you invest time in browsing the web or assessing the credibility of sources you find there. Once you've determined that online sources can be used, you'll still need to assess their credibility. The following criteria for assessing online sources will help you to determine whether electronic sources are both professional and appropriate. Authorship Is the author identifiable? Publishing Body/Publisher Is the type of material appropriate? Currency Can you identify the date created as well as date(s) revised? Perspectives Can you identify the goals of the site? Coverage Is there an in-depth understanding of the related issues that shows the author's familiarity with the subject? Accuracy or verifiability Is the material comparable to related sources?
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. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it’s up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. 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. Today, just as it was back then, “Who is the author?” Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic badinfo. Resources:
Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses. But it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make the reliability and credibility decisions. News literacy is complicated. Professional journalists themselves face new practical and ethical challenges relating to anonymity, privacy and safety, as well as reliability in their attempts to verify sources of breaking news from social media and user-generated content in all media formats. Even news that is vetted by editors and publishers sometimes emerges from that process a bit processed, perhaps leaning in a particular direction. And word choice itself is connected to truth. On news literacy In its glossary, Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy defines news literacy as: Our kids need new types of filters. Fake news
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.
TED Ed – Online Tools for Teaching & Learning TED-Ed is a “lesson creator” platform that allows you to structure an assignment around a video and assess students’ engagement with the material. The lesson format consists of a lesson title, a written introduction (“Let’s Begin”), a series of multiple choice or open-ended questions (“Think”), a place for additional resources to encourage further exploration (“Dig Deeper”), an interactive class discussion (“Discuss”), and a closing (“And Finally”). Tool Snapshot Ever watch a great video on YouTube and wish you could share it with your class? The lesson format consists of a lesson title, a written introduction (“Let’s Begin”), a series of multiple choice or open-ended questions (“Think”), a place for additional resources to encourage further exploration (“Dig Deeper”), an interactive class discussion (“Discuss”), and a closing (“And Finally”). Privacy: In order to create lessons you must open an TED-Ed account, which requires an email address or Facebook account and password. Resources
What is a Good Argument? | The Critical Thinker Academy NOTE: This is a FREE course, courtesy of the Critical Thinker Academy's monthly supporters. It's included in the site-wide bundle which unlocks every course in the Academy. This is where every course in critical thinking begins, with a discussion of the most basic and foundational concepts necessary for argument analysis. What is an argument? What is a premise? What is a conclusion? This course also introduces the single most important distinction in argument analysis, the distinction between the truth or falsity of the premises of an argument, and the logical relationship between the premises and the conclusion. The last section discusses two important types of argument, “deductive” and “inductive”, and how they relate to scientific reasoning. What Will I Learn in This Course? In this course you'll learn: What Do I Get With This Course? When you enroll in this course you get This course will give you the basic vocabulary for talking about good versus bad arguments.
Did Media Literacy Backfire? - Data & Society: Points Update: On March 9, 2018, I gave a talk expanding on my ideas in this post after a year of reflection/research. You can read the talk crib and watch the video at here: “You Think You Want Media Literacy…. Do you?” Anxious about the widespread consumption and spread of propaganda and fake news during this year’s election cycle, many progressives are calling for an increased commitment to media literacy programs. Others are clamoring for solutions that focus on expert fact-checking and labeling. I remember a casual conversation that I had with a teen girl in the midwest while I was doing research. For years, that casual conversation has stuck with me as one of the reasons that we needed better Internet-based media literacy. Understanding what sources to trust is a basic tenet of media literacy education. Students are also encouraged to reflect on economic and political incentives that might bias reporting. Combine this with a deep distrust of media sources. The path forward is hazy.
URFIST - Accueil - URFIST de Lyon Object | What Is an Object? Object (English Grammar) An object is a noun (or pronoun) that is governed by a verb or a preposition. There are three kinds of object: Direct Object (e.g., I know him.)Indirect Object (e.g., Give her the prize.)Object of a Preposition (e.g., Sit with them.) Examples of Direct Objects The direct object of a verb is the thing being acted upon. Read more about direct objects. Examples of Indirect Objects The indirect object is the recipient or beneficiary of the action (more often than not, it's a person). Examples of Objects of Prepositions The noun (or pronoun) governed by a preposition (i.e., words like "in," "on," "at," "by," "near") is known as the object of a preposition. More about Objects Here are three more noteworthy points related to objects: Only transitive verbs can have a direct or indirect object. When a verb has a direct object, it is called a transitive verb. Malcolm fell very badly. Linking verbs don't have a direct object. Don't confuse subject complements with direct objects.
About | Howard Rheingold I fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension in 1981, then plugged my computer into my telephone in 1983 and got sucked into the net. In earlier years, my interest in the powers of the human mind led to Higher Creativity (1984), written with Willis Harman, Talking Tech (1982) and The Cognitive Connection (1986) with Howard Levine,Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind: A Book of Memes (1988),Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (1990), with Stephen LaBerge, and They Have A Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases.(1988). I ventured further into the territory where minds meet technology through the subject of computers as mind-amplifiers and wrote Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Amplifiers (1984) [New edition from MIT Press, April 2000]. In 1985, I became involved in the WELL, a “computer conferencing” system. In 1994, I was one of the principal architects and the first Executive Editor of HotWired.