What the Heck is Fake News? (Something everyone should know by now) Sigh. It’s been years and people still don’t understand what “fake news” is. In October 2019, this was brought to the fore by Citrus County Commissioner Scott Carnahan (video here) — who in my mind immediately became known as “Fake News” Carnahan — when he refused to sign-off on the library’s request to renew a New York Times digital subscription for the public because it was “fake news,” declaring, by way of reasoning, that he supported Trump. Sigh. It’s been years and people still don’t understand what fake news is. Could this be much ado about nothing? Now then, throw on those truth goggles and let’s go! A research guide from the University of Michigan Library defines fake news as: “…those news stories that are false: the story itself is fabricated, with no verifiable facts, sources or quotes. It’s not a surprise that fake news is easily misunderstood. Sometimes, though, it’s user error. Part of that is also assessing the credibility of non-fiction resources.
An Engaging Word Game Helps Students Grasp Implicit Bias As part of an effort to demonstrate the effect of implicit bias, library media specialist Jacquelyn Whiting devised an exercise that looks similar to “Mad Libs,” the popular fill-in-the-blank word game. In EdSurge’s “Everyone Has Invisible Bias. This Lesson Shows Students How to Recognize It,” Whiting describes how she removed words from a New York Times opinion essay to create a new, highly engaging activity for a 10th-grade class. Jacquelyn Whiting Whiting removed key words from the essay to create a paragraph for students to fill-in-the-blank. Sharply conflicting viewpoints emerged, and it became more obvious to the students that word choice matters. The discrepancies were revelations to the students “many of whom had been classmates for years, who lived in similar neighborhoods and took multiple classes together.” The biggest benefit of the lesson is its replicability, Whiting says.
Everyone Has Invisible Bias. This Lesson Shows Students How to Recognize It. Last year, an English teacher at my school came to me with an all-too-common concern about an essay a student named Kyle had just turned in. The teacher’s 10th grade class had just finished op-ed essays on a topic of their choice, and Kyle had chosen to examine the economic impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy. But in his submitted draft every source in his bibliography—and I do mean every—leaned toward one political bias, and sometimes quite heavily. “It happened again,” lamented my colleague. Despite directing the class to consult disparate points of view and guiding them to databases and websites constructed to provide point and counterpoint arguments, Kyle hadn’t shown any effort in entertaining other viewpoints. Students were failing the most central tenet of media literacy, and turning in another set of essays reinforcing bias confirmation. “How do we help them recognize when their bias is interfering with their understanding?” Confronting Invisible Bias
In a Data Literacy Crisis, Librarians Could Be the Experts We Need In his work, Chapters from My Autobiography, Mark Twain famously complained (and attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli), "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Imagine Twain’s frustration in today’s data-driven world. But he would have been in good company. Even as information, analytics, and statistics drive more decisions in our daily lives, we’re facing a data literacy crisis. Qlik’s recently published global data literacy report found that just 24% of business decision-makers surveyed are fully confident in their ability to read, work with, analyze, and argue with data. Perhaps most surprising, 60% of U.S. workers 16 to 24 years old—people who have been raised surrounded by technology—are overwhelmed by the data they must read and analyze as part of their jobs. But data literacy can also be defined from a more consumer perspective: When people encounter numbers, visualizations, and statistics, can they make good decisions about them?
Contrary to common belief, randomised controlled trials inevitably produce biased results Much of the social and medical sciences depend on randomised control trials. But while this may be considered the foundational experimental method, a certain degree of bias inevitably arises in any trial; whether this is sample bias, selection bias, or measurement bias. This is important as the level of validity of a trial’s causal claims can be a matter of life or death. To Alexander Krauss, the scientific process is a complex human process, involving many actors required to take many unique decisions at many different stages, and so some degree of bias is unavoidable. This has implications for the reproducibility crisis, as variation between study outcomes becomes the norm, and one-to-one replication is not possible. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are generally viewed as the foundational experimental method of the social and medical sciences. Many of us have likely used some medication, own some technology, or support some public policy tested in a trial. In many cases they are.
Fact checking and fake news lesson plans - The ultimate teacher guide The internet comes with an overload of information. Though this is a benefit to most teachers and students, internet has a dark side. Photoshop shows you pictures of things that didn’t actually happen, websites have articles with fake content, and amateur journalists invent impressive statistics that are actually a hoax. On the internet, anything may look real, but it isn’t. Think twice before you cite. In this fake news guide, I’ll show you how you can teach your students fact checking and much more. Before you start reading, it’s important to know the definition of fake news. What is fake news? Fake news is defined as news stories that are false. Fake news can be propaganda that is intentionally designed to mislead the reader, or may be designed as “clickbait” written for economic incentives. The Dangers of fake news Fake news stories comes with many disadvantages. Wrong. It’s possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1.
6 Google Tricks When You Don't Know What to Search For Despite spending millions of dollars on fancy algorithms, Google Search can sometimes be a fickle beast. You know that the information you’re looking for is out there, but no matter what search terms you enter, you can’t find a suitable result. But don’t worry. So today, we’re going to look at a few different ways to help you search for something. Google’s wildcard search operator is useful if you… Don’t know a particular word in a phrase you’re looking for.Want to search for multiple results around a base phrase. To use the wildcard search operator, just type an asterisk (*) in place of the world you’re not sure about. For example, let’s suppose you’ve heard a great song on the radio, but you can’t make out a certain word. Similarly, you could use the Google wildcard search operator to look for results around a theme. 2. The Related Sites tool lets you find any sites that are similar to the domain you enter into the search. 3. 4. 5. Yes! 6. Learn More About Using Google Search 2. 3. 4. 5.
How to recognize fake news on Facebook If you’ve been looking at Facebook lately, you may have seen that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, a town in Texas was quarantined due to a deadly disease and Germany just approved child marriage. To be clear, none of these events really happened ― but that didn’t stop news of them from spreading like a virus. Fake news articles ― especially throughout this election year ― have increasingly become a fixture on social media. These posts, designed to deceive, run rampant across the internet. Only later, if ever, do readers discover that the stories they shared may have been false. The publication of blatantly inaccurate stories is certainly not new to the digital age, or even the analog era ― just check your local supermarket aisle for tabloids ― but what is new is how easy it is for a reader to scan a headline on Facebook, hit share and watch his 500 followers do the same. In order to prevent the spread of fake news, here is a quick guide to spotting it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Numbers and the tricks they play - BBC Academy Numbers can be used to tell all sorts of stories. They can help show the scale of a particular problem or issue, illustrating whether it’s big or small. In this short animation you’ll learn: that just because a number looks big doesn't mean it really ishow a really small number might turn out to be much bigger than it first appears It sometimes helps to break numbers down to see what they really mean or turn them into something you can relate to. Large distances or areas can be broken down into the equivalent number of football pitchesLarge numbers of people are often represented by actual areas or even entire countries and populations Remember to use the same basic checks you do with any story, and ask yourself: who is giving me this number? Learn how to use numbers in stories by trying our lesson plan.
Why You Should Become a Wikipedia Editor | Wonk! Magazine Why You Should Become a Wikipedia Editor Nearly all of you will have used Wikipedia at least once in your life. With 1.4 billion users every month, it makes it the 5th most popular website on the internet. Most people in the UK have a general understanding of what Wikipedia is and does, but coming up for its 19th birthday, it's had time to become rather big and complex. On the English Wikipedia, there are strict guidelines for how editors should create content, and what they can create content about. People who volunteer their time to improve Wikipedia also tend to be male. Understanding how to edit Wikipedia is a vital skill for any student today. By learning how to edit Wikipedia you’ll learn to think critically, to research, analyse and judge sources, to understand how copyright works and maybe even some basic coding, if you want to understand how the software behind Wikipedia works. There’s a famous Indian story about ‘the blind men and the elephant’. How Do X-Rays Work?
PISA’s warning: teachers need to teach Information Literacy explicitly if we are to reverse the decline – Information Literacy Spaces On December 03rd 2019, Stuff news reported on the results of the 2018 round of the OECD’s PISA(1) testing in Reading Literacy, Mathematics Literacy and Science Literacy(2). The article noted the consistent downward trends in achievement, since 2012, of New Zealand 15 year olds in these three ‘curriculum’ areas. I want to concentrate on Reading Literacy. PISA’s operating concept of reading literacy in the adolescent years is encouragingly cross-curricular. Locating information (25%) Both accessing and retrieving information within a piece, but also searching and selection of relevant text. OECD (2019b). 2018 Reading Framework. These features do carry forward elements of that traditional view of comprehension, but it is the information skills – particularly about locating, handling and evaluating information that makes this PISA report important reading. So what can we take from this report? In addition the report noted students’ views of their English teachers’ performance. Ken Kilpin
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT NEWS STORY IS REAL? - MetroFocus Pseudoscience is taking over social media – and putting us all at risk Search for “climate change” on YouTube and before long you’ll likely find a video that denies it exists. In fact, when it comes to shaping the online conversation around climate change, a new study suggests that deniers and conspiracy theorists might hold an edge over those believing in science. Researchers found evidence that most YouTube videos relating to climate change oppose the scientific consensus that it’s primarily caused by human activities. The study highlights the key role of social media use in the spread of scientific misinformation. The recent study by Joachim Allgaier of RWTH Aachen University in Germany analysed the content of a randomised sample of 200 YouTube videos related to climate change. The videos peddling the conspiracy theories received the highest number of views. Health misinformation Climate change is far from the only area where we see a trend for online misinformation about science triumphing over scientifically valid facts. Scientists need to get involved