Do You Skim?

Most of us skim to get the basic meaning without reading every word. This may work well when trying to spot keywords in articles or Web pages, but when skimming replaces reading the consequences can be unexpected.

• If I skim the news, I may know a detail or two but not understand the context or relationships on which events hinge.
• If I skim my latest Bill Bryson travel book, I will know a few things about a few places, but I may miss out on his experience of the journey.
• If I skim my wife's emails to me, I am bound to miss something that I will need to know. This happens frequently.

If I do this all the time, my ability to read deeply may be altered. At least this is the message in a new article by Marianne Wolf entitled, Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound. Understanding the complexities of prose or legal documents or other professionally authored works cannot be accomplished by skimming. It takes a slower read and can take some effort.

I am happy to see my granddaughter curl up for extended periods of time with Harry Potter books.  Maybe she's skimming, but I think she's enjoying the experience too much for that to be the case.

We teach skimming to speed up the keyword recognition process. But when it comes to evaluation, a slower read is necessary--otherwise, how can you detect bias or factual inconsistencies? Skimming is perfect for consumers of fake news: don't read too much and don't think too hard about what you read.

I encourage you to read the full article.  I think I'll spend more time seeing how catty Bill Bryson can be.

Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.

New Search Challenge: Slinky

It was bound to happen.

Someone submitted a Search Challenge question to Answers.com and finally got a correct answer. Therefore, it's time to retire old Search Challenge #6, the Apollo 8 Toy Challenge.

I'd like to introduce its replacement; Search Challenge #102, the Slinky Challenge.

If you would, please test it; see if you can solve it. It could be classified as an intermediate challenge.

I designed this challenge to require careful reading of the question, the snippets that result from queries and the content of web pages that may hold an answer.  In addition to careful reading, an optimal strategy involves "deep web" searching. One of the best places to search is the NASA site. Relying solely on Google, the query is packed with keywords. On the NASA site, a query of only two words works quite well.

Go ahead and give me your feedback, but don't include the answer, because then this blog will become another source of the answer (and one that will work with a Google search).

A Query for Curry

Here's a good example of what can happen when facts aren't checked adequately.
It is reported that Ann Curry, news anchor for the NBC Today Show, mixed up her list of noteworthy graduates from Wheaton College while speaking at the Norton, MA college last Saturday. There happen to be two Wheaton Colleges (I attended the one in Illinois) and it's easy to get them mixed up.

Identical or similar names are easy to confuse online. Several Internet Search Challenges are built on this premise. The earliest of these, the Buffalo Challenge, was created to require additional keywords besides 'buffalo' ("How many buffalo are there today in North America?"). Search engines do a better job with that phrase than they once did. A few years ago you'd have to sort out the Buffalo New Yorks and Buffalo Bills and Buffalo wings from the bison statistics you wanted.

The query, famous graduates wheaton college, leads to a Wikipedia list of notable alumni, possibly the source of Curry's information. The results suggest there could be a problem with the information: Wheaton College (Illinois). Overlooking that part about Illinois could be someone's undoing.  I wouldn't call this as failure of fact-checking as much as a failure of reading.

When you don't know the existence of rival information, what are you to do? Taking the first return and stopping there is rarely a good idea, although the alternative, checking several returns, takes time.  When the accuracy of the information matters, spending the time to look at several returns makes good sense.  It's probably less time-consuming than writing an apology.

The query checklist doesn't ask this question, but it may be a good one to add: "is there more than one of the person, place or thing I am looking for?"

If you've ever encountered a similar confusion between (or among) search objects, share your story!

"My Predicament (I need your help)"

First thing Saturday morning I was confronted with an appeal sent from my daughter-in-law's gmail account. Here is the full text of the message entitled "My predicament (I need your help):"

It is with profound sense of sadness i wrote this email to you. I don't know how you will find this but you just have to forgive me for not telling you before leaving. I traveled down to United Kingdom on Thursday for a short vacation but unfortunately,i got mugged at gun point on my way to the hotel where i lodged.All my money and all other vital documents including my credit cards and my cell phone have been stolen by the muggers.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all,Things are difficult here and i don't know what to do at the moment that why i email to ask if you can lend me £800.00 so i can settle the hotel bills and get a return ticket back home. Please do me this great help and i promise to refund the money as soon as i get back home

I look forward to your positive response,so i can send you the details you need to send the money to me through Western Union.

Maybe you too received a message like this from someone you know. It's an annoying example of what happens when an email account gets hacked; it also challenges you to use your digital investigation skills.

I would use this with grades 6 and up to stimulate critical information literacy skills.  The example provides some interesting clues which immediately caused me to be skeptical. These were the questions that ran through my mind:

1. Do I know where she is now? Not for sure, but having just spent 2 weeks with us for Christmas, I seriously doubted she would take off for a short vacation to the UK. Still, anything is possible. Quickest way to find out?  Call her cell phone. In fact, many of her friends who also received the message did just that. If she answers, the claim about her cell phone being stolen is false.

2. Is this how she writes? This is not how the person I know writes. Too many awkward phrases and grammatical mistakes. Words can be like body language, revealing things the writer intended to cover up. Who would write to a close relative using "I look forward to your positive response..."?  That's pretty formal for family. Other keywords from the context that don't match the style (personality) of the person I know are: 'profound sense of sadness', 'you just have to forgive me', 'traveled down to UK',  'great help' and 'refund'. There are other ways to say these things that would be more characteristic of my daughter-in-law.

3. Can you travel to the US from the UK without a passport? Since all vital documents were stolen, how can she board an airplane?

You may see other things in the email that don't add up. The point is, it always pays to investigate before committing money online. Since this email went out to all her gmail contacts, I'm glad no one that we know of is out the money.

As a teaching example, challenge your students to come up with questions about the content of the message that would prevent someone from being tricked into sending money. Have them develop a profile of the author from the keywords and how they are used. Reading between the lines in this way is an information literacy skill that's also useful for detecting bias.

Whale Tale

My colleague Dennis O'Connor is spending a few days in Baja. He reports seeing whales every day.

I thought I'd browse around to see what mischief online I could find related to whales. It didn't take long to find www.icrwhales.net.

This is a fairly curious site which proclaims itself to be a parody. I haven't seen it listed on any of the standard hoax indices. The site, which calls itself the Institute of Delicious Whale Research (IDWR), contains stories and examples that suggest a humorous orientation. That might make a good challenge for older students: identify how the language of the site discloses its purpose.  It's pretty much the same skill set as trying to detect bias.

Perhaps more challenging to find is the AUTHOR and PUBLISHER. Let's see if anyone can come up with that information and post it here, along with a brief description how you found it.  Knowing more about the author(s) may help answer this question: can you detect whether the author is for or against whale hunting?

Another challenge: what site is icrwhales.net parodizing?


You may want to add this example to your list of hoax/parody sites.

Yes, There's a Need - Part 2

Using performance assessments to study how people search is very revealing. Several years ago, we identified five major things that students don't know how to do that keeps them from achieving information fluency. In case you're unfamiliar with our work, these are 1) turning questions into queries, 2) selecting appropriate databases, 3) recognizing relevant results/finding better keywords, 4) evaluating the credibility of information, and 5) using information ethically (creating citations).

Upon closer examination, there are five problem areas related to evaluation alone--the facet of information fluency where students' shortcoming are most evident. These have to do with 1) reading carefully, 2) understanding different types of queries and when to apply them, 3) navigating by browsing effectively, 4) truncating urls and 5) checking for page information. Not knowing about a technique or how to apply it is one thing. Even when students (and adults) know the techniques, going too fast tends to erase any advantage the techniques might provide.

Speed is likely the biggest factor responsible for ineffective, inefficient searching. In terms of efficiency, it is ironic that the slower you go the better you perform.

We've consistently noticed "the-slower-the-better" relationship while conducting research. The faster a person goes, the more likely it is that important clues will be overlooked. The place this really has a negative impact on information fluency is (not) finding better keywords in snippets and (not) tracking down leads that can be used in determining the credibility of an author or an author's work. It is possible to find good clues by scanning, but the speed at which students scan a page renders understanding what is read unlikely. This is why we advise students taking our assessments to take their time.

Speed tends to be the factor that explains why a student scores higher on a pretest than a post-test. Our current assessment work utilizes a pair of 10-item tests.* Students who take less than 20 minutes tend not to score very well. That's 2 minutes per item, most of which require submitting a query or navigating to find answers, reading content to find clues and checking on those clues with a subsequent search. It's very hard to do that in 2 minutes. Deliberately slowing down, taking time to look for clues (because you know they are there) makes a big difference.

Because people have other things they want to do with their time, knowing when to slow down and conduct a careful search is paramount. My advice is, slow down when the stakes start to get high. For some, this will be when a grade or money is on the line, or a performance review or a job. Not every search demands the same careful consideration. But when it does, you need to take the time.

So time yourself. After becoming familiar with the instructions, give yourself two minutes to try the following search activity. Without looking at the possible answers (click 'give me a do-over' rather than 'show me the words'), allow yourself five minutes and do it again. Do you notice a difference in your score?

In what contest is one of the prizes a Hasbro action figure of the winner?

http://21cif.com/rkitp/challenge/v1n3/snippetsleuth/ActionFigure/SS_ActionFigure.swf

--

*If you'd like to try the 10-item tests yourself, sign up for Investigative Searching 20/10 (sign in as guest for access). The assessments are featured in that course.