Your Information is out of Date

Recently I emailed an Information Fluency newsletter to subscribers who want to know about such resources. One of the features included three Wizards: the Search Wizard, the Evaluation Wizard and the Citation Wizard. These have been popular online tools for a number of years. They help students understand the search process, how to determine the credibility of Internet information and efficiently to format citations, helping to avoid plagiarism.

Then I got this message:

Carl, I passed the citation wizard on to my English department. The feedback that I had was, it does not include the new changes for 2009 for MLA.

That was a surprise to me. I hadn't considered the possibility that MLA updated their citation requirements. The Wizard for the MLA style was based on the 2003 edition.

I did the necessary research and coded the changes in the Wizard, but in doing so I uncovered a number of sites that have not synced up with MLA's 7th Edition. Currently, you can find reputable sources providing out of date information. (If you want, challenge your students to search for MLA citation guidelines and see what they come up with.)

This is a good example where subject-specific knowledge assists the evaluation. The English Department knew about the changes because they follow that news. Somehow I missed it. I imagine there are students out there who have not yet caught wind of the change. Even if you search for MLA citation style online, you may still land on the previous edition. How can you tell if your information is out of date?

It sounds pretty Aristotelian, but how can you know what you don't know? This is a predicament with most searching. Either you know enough about the subject already or you take it on trust because one or more reputable sources said so.

A very small percentage of students are likely to be experts in the subject matter they are researching. They will either assume what they find is authoritative or they will accept it because someone with more expertise used it.

In either case, there's always a danger you will be wrong.  Assuming information is accurate, based on face value, is certainly risky. Accepting it because someone who knows more than you validates it is also a risk. What if they're wrong?

Even without subject-matter expertise, simple investigative techniques may reduce making a Type I error, accepting information as correct when it is not.

The trouble is that it takes time and effort, if only a few seconds.  A student could do a quick fact-check on MLA style to see if there any recent developments (e.g., MLA citation change). I wager very few will do that; I didn't.

While I felt a little embarrassed when called out on the mistake, it's the only way I could have found out this quickly that the Wizard was out of date. Sometimes we will just make avoidable mistakes and thank those that correct us.

Next time I think I'll do a quick fact-check first.

Brainwave Challenge

A former colleague sent me an article on the neurological benefits of Internet searching that he thought I would find interesting.

I did, but for an unintended reason. It's not only good research to ponder, it's a search challenge.

Here's the link to the article, Exercise Your Brain Online. The second paragraph clearly states that the information is gleaned from a study of brain activity. What's not clear is who performed the study and that this is not a new study.  Only when you go in search of the original report do you find the research, the researcher and the fact that it is already a couple years old.

This is the type of challenge that often trips up students. They find only part of the information they need.

Here's the challenge: find the rest of the information--locate the original article, author(s) and date of publication.

Challenge #2: how would you cite it?


Leave your findings in the comments. But also take time to read the findings and use the information to make a case why information fluency is not just a 21st Century skill--it's good for the brain.

Phishing and Evaluation

We all get them.

Marketing emails intent on getting your personal information: phishing. One showed up in my inbox today that actually interested me. I might have even signed up, except for a few "phishy" details that made me suspicious.

Investigative searching is always a good (safe) idea before acting on:

1. information you want to use in a report
2. anything online that costs you money
3. anything unsolicited that requires you to reveal personal information

Here's a copy of the email that sought to wrangle personal information from me. [Note from the URL that I saved a copy of the email; this is one "phish" I didn't want to let get away.]

At first glance, logos from Cisco and eSchool News make it all seem believable and benign. But problems lurk beneath the surface.

The first red flag for me was the date of the event. There isn't one. My email browser routinely blocks images and I clicked on load images a little too soon to notice that there is a date associated with the header. However, the source code contains very important date information: the alt text for the header images indicates the event is May 20, 2009. Today is Sept 1, 2009. I might not have caught that unless a colleague to whom I forwarded the email noticed the alt text (he didn't load the images). There's one good reason NOT to load blocked images.

The second odd bit of information is the alt text for the Elluminate logo. It's misspelled. Again it was my colleague Jim Gerry who caught this irregularity. I don't think an organization advertising a session about video would misspell the video tool being used.

Even though I had missed these big clues, the lack of a date was a critical omission. Who would go to the trouble of advertising this event without a date?

Then there's the issue of the links. Roll over the REGISTER TODAY button and look at the URL: www.weic11.com/. I expected something pointing to Cisco. But this is a valuable clue. Who or what is weic11.com? Using whois.net, I located the owner: Worldata, Inc., 3000 N Military Trail
Boca Raton, FL 33431. The URL weic11.com leads to worldata.com, so that is consistent.

What is Worldata? According to its website, it is a group of companies in the direct/interactive marketing service field. Now I know this is more about marketing than learning about the use of video.

This is where I stopped searching. I could have researched Worldata to see about phishing complaints, but my purpose was served and I stopped short of registering for an expired event and giving a marketing company reasons to send me more spam.

Can you find any other suspicious clues? Or have you received interesting "phishing" emails? They can make good search challenges. Let kids investigate them--it may help prevent them from giving away personal information that should be kept confidential.

P.S. As of this writing, the links on my saved "phishing" file still work; don't make the mistake of filling out the forms.

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Here's an answer to the previous challenge: Toto makes a toilet that analyzes urine samples.