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.
Evaluating Internet Research Sources Robert Harris Version Date: January 21, 2015 Previous: December 27, 2013; November 6, 2013; Nov. 22, 2010 and June 15, 2007 "The central work of life is interpretation." --Proverb Introduction: The Diversity of Information Adopting a Skeptical Attitude You might have heard of the term information warfare, the use of information as a weapon. Getting Started: Screening Information Source Selection Tip: Try to select sources that offer as much of the following information as possible: Author's Name Author's Title or Position Author's Organizational Affiliation Date of Page Creation or Version Author's Contact Information Some of the Indicators of Information Quality (listed below) Evaluating Information: The Tests of Information Quality The CARS Checklist for Information Quality Summary of The CARS Checklist for Research Source Evaluation Living with Information: The CAFÉ Advice Books you need:
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:
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?
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.
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
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.
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
URFIST - Accueil - URFIST de Lyon 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.
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.