Spam email: Red Flags

Other than a SPAM: alert that may be provided by your email software, how can you tell this message isn't real?

Good Day,

My name is Mrs Linda Walker and I work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), I am writing you to let you know that finally your ATM Card worth $650,000.00 USD has been delivered through UPS to Mr Hart Leroy, who works with the IMF where it is going to be activated before final delivery to your home address. You can use the tracking number with the tracking site below to track the ATM Card to be sure it has been delivered to Mr Hart for activation.

UPS Tracking number: 1z2876490390947593
UPS tracking site: http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/track

Below is the contact information to Mr Hart Leroy

Contact Name: Mr Hart Leroy
Contact E-mail: hart.leroy.office@gmail.com
Contact Number: +1 347 298 9752

You are to contact Mr Hart with his email address above then he will guide you on how your Card will be activated and delivered to your home address.

Note: The only fee you are to send for the activation fee is just $280 USD so make sure you don’t send him more than $280 USD. Your card is already with him and you can track it with the tracking details given to you above for confirmation.

Congratulations once more.

Best Regards,
Mrs Linda Walker
International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Before sending in $280 to activate this card, how can you check its validity? Here are some Red Flags:

On the surface,

Too good to be true: Experience teaches that few things in life are free.
It costs something: Be wary when a stranger asks for money.
It sounds complicated: Why would the IMF send a card to someone else at IMF that you have to contact? Why not just send you the card?

Below the surface,

Sender: If you look closely at the sender's email address you'll find this: "International Monetary Fund (IMF)" info@sender.org.   IMF actually uses this email: @imf.org, which can be found on their Website.  
No Data Found: If you look up whois.net registration information for sender.org, you won't find any. It appears to be a smoke screen.
Third Party Review: Copy the first phrase of the email: "My name is Mrs Linda Walker and I work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)" and google it. There is an exact match from antifraudintl.org › Scam Mail Depot › Government scams.

There may be more Red Flags, but it's clear that this is not going to result in your receipt of an ATM card.

Have students identify Red Flags -- what others can they find?

Out of the Library, Into the Classroom

What's happening in Kansas isn't unique.

Wichita Public Radio's feature,  "The School Librarian is Expendable in many Kansas School Districts" documents a large scale shift in responsibility for information literacy instruction. As the number of school librarians dwindles, information literacy is being integrated into classroom curriculum to be addressed by teachers. How effective this will be, time will tell. Another case of teachers being asked to do more.

Neighboring Colorado is similarly affected, with a nine percent decline in the number of school librarians between 2007 and 2011.

In Illinois, Chicago Public Schools reduced its librarian staff by 44 percent in just two years. Librarians are being reassigned to classrooms as teachers. Faced with a teacher shortage, it's a move that makes sense. But part of the problem of considering librarians a luxury comes down to this:

"There's no required amount of minutes for library instruction (in Illinois), so schools won't face any repercussions if they don't have a librarian or a school library." Source

For the time being, other things are just more important. It's hard to make the argument that digital research skills are as important as learning how to learn when there is no reason to learn them other than they are good skills to have. When they are considered essential skills, the tide may start to change.

In the meantime, policy makers should see how proficient students in Elementary through High School are. This means assessment. The Information Fluency assessments we've tested show that students can't research challenging assignments and consistently make poor choices in the selection of information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, out of date, biased and is not held in high regard by trusted sources. If you are a librarian concerned about your job or a classroom teacher who just doesn't have the time to teach one more thing, request a free test for your students. The results could be eye-opening.

Trends in Information Literacy

Our friends at EasyBib have produced a new Infographic that confirms our findings that the majority of instruction depends on one-shot instruction or is still being built.

How does this match with your experience?  Full size image

If you aren't satisfied with one-shot instruction or need resources for developing instruction, the Information Fluency website is full of ideas! Consider our self-paced tutorial modules as a way to supplement your library instruction.

Fallacies

Fallacies (mistaken beliefs based on an unsound argument) appear in many forms, as the author of pearls and elephants recently posted:

Straw man – an argument used against a real person, the key is that the straw man does not exist but is fabricated to take attention away from the real person.  Discerning a straw man argument means finding out who the real person is and what he/she stands for – voting records help with this and are available via Freedom of Information Act requests.

Red Herring – a false plank or issue, similar to the straw man in that it is a fabrication meant to take attention away from actuality.

Band Wagon – Apple uses this to great effect, it is otherwise known as the coolness effect.  “Everyone is doing it (or wearing it), come on!”  Parents often confront this argument with, “If everyone jumped off a bridge, or stood on a rooftop to take a selfie, does that make it an intelligent, informed choice?”

Slippery Slope – an argument that asks you to accept a small step that leads to another step until ultimately you have strayed far from the truth.  An example comes from a play titled, A Streetcar Named Desire.  In the play, the female lead wears a slip rather than her dress on stage.  It caused a furor in 1947 – what about today?

More types of fallacies are discussed here

Fallacies are Red Flags. Other red flags include innocent inaccuracies (errors, mistakes), accidental or intended omissions, author bias, prejudice, deliberate misinformation, phishing. Fallacies are a staple of propaganda.

A great student evaluation activity is to provide examples of fallacious information and have students decide what it is.

What would you say these are:

1. Reporter: "It seems to me that if you were elected president, the Congress with which you would have to work would not be very cooperative at all. How could you, as president, bring about any reform or help enact any beneficial legislation with a Congress that was almost totally opposed to your programs?" Ross Perot: "Well, if I were elected, about half the members of Congress would drop dead of heart attacks, and half of my problem would be solved from the outset."  [source/answer]
2. Environmentalist: "Bicycle infrastructure should be expanded because cycling is a sustainable mode of transportation." Opponent: "We should not build bike lanes because cyclists run red lights and endanger pedestrians." [source/answer]
3. Blogger: "I hope the art mural at 34th and Habersham will not be allowed. You open the gate for one, you open it for all and you'll have it all over the city. A person wanting to paint on buildings is nothing more than upscale graffiti. More than likely it will go too far." [source/answer]
4. Son: "Wow, Dad, it's really hard to make a living on my salary." Father: "Consider yourself lucky, son. Why, when I was your age, I only made $40 a week." [source/answer]
5. Voter:  "Everyone in Lemmingtown is behind Jim Duffie for Mayor. Shouldn't you be part of the winning team?" [source/answer]

Feel free to add your own examples by leaving a comment.

Information Warfare

In the 10-15 year history of digital information literacy, the need has generally been to help students find accurate, credible information and use it ethically. The stakes were typically low, i.e., school assignments, reports and personal projects.

Nowadays, there's a bigger threat to illiteracy: information warfare.

NATO has launched a Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga, Latvia for the purpose of combating alleged pro-Russian propaganda. The purpose of the Center, according to Director Janis Karklins, is to "develop skills of media information literacy and critical thinking in our education system to make it harder for adversaries to disorient the population." Read the full article.

The Internet may be a greater hazard than ever as a tool for terrorist recruiting and military "hybrid warfare." The challenge is how to educate populations to recognize and resist information that is created specifically to control or disorient thinking.

Educators would do well to keep an eye on the Center's activities to see how they propose to educate an populace about propaganda. Better yet, it may make an excellent language arts or social studies assignment for high school students to see Internet warfare and effective defenses in action.

Information: To filter or not to filter?

Making it easier for children to use digital information does not always prepare them for real life tasks.

Filtering information to make it more kid-friendly takes several forms. A recent Japanese study found that students were more successful when given information that was presented in an organized way. For example answering a multiple choice test based on what different sources said, by providing the students with four sources. But when asked to determine the answer to a simple question that involved selecting relevant pages from a fictitious Website, the majority of students--more than 90% of elementary and 88% of middle school students--could not answer the question.

Analyzing the results, professor Kazuo Nagano concluded, "(students) need to acquire skills to filter disorganized pieces of information to find solutions, whether online or in the real world." Read more

What information do you provide your students? Disorganized or filtered?

Try this challenge with students: What is the year-round temperature of Fauntleroy Creek? Start here--http://www.fauntleroy.net/http://www.fauntleroy.net/  This is a real Website and the information is only three clicks away. For younger students, start at #1 or #2.

start: http://www.fauntleroy.net/
1. http://www.fauntleroy.net/issuesprojects.html
2. http://www.fauntleroywatershed.org/creek/news.html
answer: http://www.fauntleroywatershed.org/creek/about.html

This is a browsing activity--searching through "disorganized" (unfiltered for students) that is bound to be frustrating. If the students know the answer is only 1 or 2 clicks away, it helps. This is one way to scale the activity without overly filtering it. What links are most promising for getting to the answer?

The Dark Side of Bias

Recognizing facts and evidence of freshness are only two of the filters fluent readers must apply to digital information. Another type is author subjectivity or bias, of which, propaganda is a more extreme form.

Propaganda, as described on the Information Fluency site, is the "dark side of bias:"

"Propaganda is the dark side of bias. Propaganda techniques are designed to influence opinion by manipulating the truth. A propagandist is completely biased in favor of some point of view.

"Knowing propaganda techniques will help you analyze webpages, understand advertising, and recognize bias when you see it.

"Authors who use name-calling and strive to evoke fear are using tried and true propaganda techniques. Appealing to the group, using glittering generalizations, and relying on testimonials are very persuasive techniques, especially if the audience is unaware of how propagandists operate."  Source

Here's a new resource, Mind Over Media, that your students may find engaging, since they can upload instances of suspected propaganda and have others react to it. There are also examples that may be used for teaching.

Not to recognize propaganda puts the reader at risk of becoming an unwitting pawn:

Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.
-Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell  Source: Propaganda and Persuasion