College Ready Information Fluency

Over the past three months I've been working on Information Researcher, our newest self-paced course for middle school and high school students.

This package will be put to the test soon by 1,000 students enrolled in Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development summer programs. The goal is to strengthen these students' digital research skills, to improve their performance in demanding coursework; to achieve college readiness.

What is college readiness? Answers will vary from institution to institution. We've based our definition on the Digital Information Fluency Model, focusing on competencies that individuals need to "get it right" most of the time.  The "it" is online research and has multiple facets.

The course consists of three parts: a 5-item practice test, 14 tutorials and 10 certification test items. Each item is performance-based and involves live searching and/or evaluating involved in representative school assignments.

The practice test gives students an opportunity to test out of the course. A passing score is 80%, a level that most individuals who have mastered search strategies and techniques can attain. It's not easy. No one passes it without training.  The skills assessed are 1) learning how to use an unfamiliar search engine, 2) using backlinks to evaluate the authority of an unknown source, 3) tracking down the owner of an unknown Web site, 4) fact checking the accuracy of content and authority of a source, 5) determining the freshness of information that lacks a published date.

In addition to these, the tutorials involve students in the following tasks: 6) browsing links to home in on information, 7) using keywords effectively with a search engine, 8) truncating URLs to reveal hidden information, 9) triangulating information to fact check accuracy, 10) using advanced operators to retrieve information, 11) detecting bias, 12) tracking down missing information for reports and citations, 13) deep web searching, 14) finding Red Flags and 15) applying search strategies effectively in a variety of challenges. The posttest incorporates the same competencies.

The target average score for middle school students is 65%; 75% for high schoolers. Before training, average scores are ~40% for middle schoolers and ~50% for high schoolers. Repeated exposure to training leads to even greater improvement.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on what constitutes college readiness in terms of information fluency. And if you'd like to preview a bite-sized portion of the course and give some feedback before we put the course online, let me know by writing to carl@21cif.com.

Fact Checking Spam

Mayotte Islands

Well, spam is good for at least one thing.  Fact checking practice.

Most spam is easily spotted. There are a few types of letters that seem to get replicated. Two of the more popular are: you've been selected to receive some money, or I need some money...  Usually I delete them without much thought, except to wonder why my spam filter lets them through.

In the the "you've been selected" category, I got this today:

From: Mr. Ban Ki-moon

Subject: ONLINE NOTICE!!!!

United Nations has deposited the sum of $10,500,000.00 USD to western union, which is to be shared among you and other 7 Email users.You are entitled to $1,500,000.00 USD in the on-going united nations poverty alleviation program. Please send your Name,Address & Phone Number, email ID:

to union payment center via email (unionpayment768@sify.com) to apply for your payment.Or call Mr. David Young @ +60166561422 for more inquiries on the above message.

Regards,

Mr. Ban Ki-moon

Secretary-General (UNITED NATIONS) ©.http://www.un.org/sg/biography.shtml

Cool. I could use 1.5 M. This email screams "hit delete." Yet it's a real goldmine for fact checking and believability:

• Ban Ki-moon - yes, he is Secretary-General of the United Nations (but why is he writing to me?)
• info@diaockhanglinh.com.vn - (a Vietnamese real estate website?);
• ONLINE NOTICE!!!! (not the message you'd expect if you actually won the money);
• $10,500,000 USD - too much to be believable?
• "you and other 7" - Mr. Ban Ki-moon needs some help with English (or maybe he types as well as Illinois' former governor);
• $1,500,000 - a nice sum and it is one-seventh of 10.5 M, but why me? Am I impoverished?
• Please send your Name, Address & Phone Number, email ID - (stranger danger!)
• union payment768@sify.com - check it out: sify.com has no believable connection to a payment (payout) center;
• +60166561422 - what are the chances this is a real phone number? International code 6-Argentina? 60-Germany? 601-Mayotte Isl? (off the east coast of Africa); for no particular reason, I vote for Mayotte;
• ©.http://www.un.org/sg/biography.shtml - not sure about the copyright symbol, but this is Ban Ki-moon's biographical page. Nice try.

So many inaccuracies; so many things don't add up. It makes for good fact checking practice.

I've left two juicy fact checking "facts" untouched. Can you find them?

Ann Margret Death Hoax

While this hoax is still making its way around the blogosphere, there are a couple good investigative tips to point out.

I first heard the story on the radio this morning. When the people on the air tried to look it up on the Web, they noted that the site's URL was mediafetcher, which made them wonder if the story was really true.

Tip 1: For breaking news, go to Twitter. When I searched for ann margret death, I saw mediafetcher.com too and below that a comment about twitter. Since lots of breaking news comes first through twitter, I searched twitter for ann margret and saw a mixture of condolences and claims the story is a hoax.

Tip 2: Read the page. The definitive fact in this case was noted in a number of tweets: the web site claims the story is FAKE. True enough, look at the bottom of the mediafetcher page:

FAKE... THIS STORY IS 100% FAKE! this is an entertainment website, and this is a totally fake article based on zero truth and is a complete work of fiction for entertainment purposes! this story was dynamically generated using a generic 'template' and is not factual. Any reference to specific individuals has been 100% fabricated by web site visitors who have created fake stories by entering a name into a blank 'non-specific' template for the purpose of entertainment. For sub-domain info, name removal requests and additional use restrictions: FakeAWish.com
Copyright © 2012 FakeAWish.com All rights reserved.

Best to do a little checking before ordering flowers.

This site may be one to watch for other fake breaking news for teaching purposes.

As for the purpose of the mediafetcher site, wouldn't you say that's a dark spin on defining 'entertainment?' If you want a challenge, find the top 10 domains operated by the individual(s) behind this hoax entertainment site. It gives you some context.

Google's Really Advanced Search

You've know doubt heard of Advanced Search. How about Really Advanced Search?

I spotted this at the bottom of a Google Search Results page today and had to take a look.

Among the search features, including the usual ones, are:

• words almost, but not quite entirely unlike:
• rhyming slang for:
• this exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime:
• subtext or innuendo for:

and this:

• the words , but not , unless they contain either the intersection of phrases , , and or a gerund in which case the disjunction of and will also be taken into account (on Tuesdays). 

At the bottom of the page are also several links:

You can also...

Tickle a unicorn

Download our ranking code so you can run Google at home

Search by odor

 

Some of the features of really advanced search might make a good coding project. They might also be a challenge to explain. But they really make a better April Fools Joke.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or incoming links or "links to" are links to a URL found on other URLs.  They may be internal links, such as 21cif.com/ found on 21cif.com/tutorials/ or external, as in the case of 21cif.com found on coolhub.imsa.edu.


External backlinks may be valuable in researching the credibility of a site.  Backlinks help to answer questions like, Who links to 21cif.com? Why? Do they have any authority?


For years, a good way to find backlinks to a page was to use the link: operator  (e.g., the query:  lilnk:21cif.com). Search engines have made changes to link: so that fewer results are obtained. 
Yahoo.com did away with link: altogether.  Google is probably still the best choice, but they return only a fraction of what they once did.


This is where specialized search engines and databases comes in handy. 


Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) provides more complete backlink results than Google. It's a free service and easy to use. Results can be filtered to eliminate all the internal links.


Using a backlink checker is a step in the investigative search process. But just knowing how many backlinks there are isn't enough. Evaluating the referential credibility of a link target requires looking at the (representative) sites to see if they have authority and why they are a backlink.  Who would you expect to backlink to 21cif.com if it is a reputable site?


Who do you find?

Update on the link: operator

I discovered something new today.

As I wrote a month or so ago, when I use the link: operator as so:

link:21cif.com

I get 48 results that link to it.

However, when I vary the same query, eliminating all the internal pages that link to the 21cif home page, as shown:

link:21cif.com -site:21cif.com

I get 7,690 results. Now that's more like it.

What is puzzling is why the number increases so dramatically, especially since the second operator is intended to limit results.  When I examine the results, I see that the term link is shown in bold in the Google results. Now I suspect that the query is actually doing this:

link AND 21cif.com -site:21cif.com

Which is basically confirmed when I try that query. So the link: operator doesn't work in combination with another operator, despite what Google says:

Find links to the Google home page not on Google’s own site.
link:www.google.com -site:google.com  source: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html#link

I think Google needs to update its operators guide.


http://21cif.com -site:http://21cif.com is still a better query than the link: operator. 


Check out link: and -site: with a few of your favorite pages. Does it work as expected?

Slinky Challenge (#006)

The Toys in Space Challenge started with Apollo 8 taking Silly Putty into Space. After the Challenge had been up for a year or so, the answer (Apollo 8) was no longer difficult to find.

So the next iteration was "On what NASA mission was Slinky first taken into space?" That was an intermediate challenge that required searching the NASA database. With the profusion of information, it was only a matter of time until a simple word query was able to find an answer without searching anything other than Google's database.

Today, the challenge reads: "Who commanded the first NASA mission to take a Slinky toy into space?"  This no longer requires finding the right database to query, but it does require some strategy and careful skimming of results. Using the FIND command is also helpful in sorting through pages of content looking for a relevant term--i.e., one of the keywords you used. Using fewer rather than more keywords is also helpful. It may also help to think of how an answer might be worded and use those keywords. I'd be interested in hearing what strategies or techniques you use in finding the answer.

This is the sixth 'refreshed' Challenge. My goal is to keep at least 10 Challenges up-to-date that focus on slightly different search skills.

Try the Challenge.