Fifth BadApple Challenge and Scoring

 

Just added: a fifth Challenge to our new Bad Apple investigation game. This one tests individual skills using a current controversy in the news: The Thomas Jefferson Statue in New York City.

Also new is a scoring feature that assesses investigative skills. Demonstrate Information Fluency by earning a score of 80% accuracy or higher. Pick up valuable investigative tips and tools along the way. Tutorials are suggested if you want to improve your score.

Play today or with your students:  https://21cif.com/tutorials/evaluation/badapple/

A Fourth BAD APPLE Challenge

Just added, another BAD APPLE Challenge:

• Challenge 4: North Shore Whale Watching
  

 

Here's a trustworthy tourism site with a section on whales in Lake Superior.

All four challenges are available without a subscription. Try them out today!

https://21cif.com///tutorials

Do you have a page or site you'd like to nominate for this evaluation tutorial? We're going to add a fifth challenge soon. Let us know if you have one to recommend.

Two New BAD APPLE Challenges

 Two new BAD APPLE Challenges have just been added to our Website:

• Challenge 2: All About Explorers
• Challenge 3: CBS News Hoax Sites

 

Both provide a mixture of GOOD and BAD APPLES to sort out. Can the sites be trusted? How can you know?

For a limited time, both Challenges are available without a site subscription. Try them out today!

https://21cif.com///tutorials/evaluation/badapple/

Bad Apples

 

Introducing the (re)release of Bad Apples, a series of do-it-yourself evaluation tutorials.

With the demise of Adobe Flash, a lot of interactive games and tutorials on the 21st Century Information Fluency site were forced into early retirement. Over time, many of these resources were rewritten so they work on current Internet browsers. 

We're pleased to announce the return of BAD APPLES, a series of challenges to strengthen investigative searching.

Presently, one challenge is available and it doesn't require an annual membership.  Challenge #1 features New Zealand Golf Cross, a site that's been around since 1998. To play, individuals research six apples (elements that determine credibility):

1. Authorship
2. Publisher
3. Freshness
4. Bias
5. Backlinks
6. Fact checking

A player then drags each apple to either the GOOD APPLE or BAD APPLE basket, depending on their assessment. One point is earned for each correct assessment. A comprehensive analysis of the site provides insights into what makes the site trustworthy or not as well as these strategies for conducting an effective investigation:

1. How to find valuable information on a site
2. How to determine site ownership
3. How to determine the 'last modified' date
4. How to detect types of bias
5. How to find external reviews of site content
6. How to fact check and where to look, including Google Scholar 

Once learned, these skills apply to all Internet content.

Ready to play?  Start Here: https://21cif.com/tutorials/evaluation/badapple/

Watch for more Challenges to come!

Evaluation Tutorials

For a limited time, try our Evaluation Challenges without a subscription!

Evaluation Challenges focus on three key aspects of evaluating digital content:

1. Identity--who is the author or publisher?
2. Freshness--how recent is the information?
3. Accuracy--to what extent are the 'facts' supported by evidence?

Each of the 10 tutorials in this module is interactive, giving feedback to user responses, and hints as needed.

If encouraging students to evaluate what they read online is important to you, assign these as homework or work through them in class, one or two a day.

https://21cif.com///tutorials/challenge/evaluate/

Finding an (elusive) Author's name

 

One of the most popular (visited) pages on 21cif.com is our collection of Citation Wizards.

Each wizard (MLA, APA, Harvard, etc.) indicates information that is needed for a proper citation. One of these is the author's name. It is hardly any problem identifying an author's name in conventionally published sources. Self-published Internet sources are different. An author isn't required to leave his or her name; some prefer to leave just a first name or pseudonym. 

A 12-part tutorial helps students (and teachers) with tools and strategies for finding elusive author's names. No subscription is required. 

This tutorial package is paired with MicroModule: Author as a companion exercise.

Try it out! How many challenges can you complete?

Implicit Bias

 

If you think you aren't biased, you're mistaken.

Everyone who has personal preferences or a sense of right vs wrong is biased.  Bias isn't always blatantly racist, sexist, political or religious. It can be implicit, that is, a person with an implicit bias may not be aware of it.

Implicit biases shape how we think and act. We--I include myself--choose to read certain types of online authors, publishers and content and avoid others. 

This fall's Full Circle articles spotlight implicit bias and how it's not enough to teach students to recognize bias in what they read, they also need to recognize it in themselves. Undetected bias is a filter that keeps out disagreeable content, letting in only that which is agreeable. The big danger in never being challenged by contrary beliefs is that the things we hold to be true remain uninformed and hard to defend.

Full Circle Fall 2021 Table of Contents

• Feature Article: Unpacking Implicit Bias (no subscription required)
• Curriculum Matters: Creating a Personal Credo
• ActionZone: Amazon Bias
• Assessment: Implicit Bias

Author Detective

Introducing the third revision in our series of Investigative Searching tutorials: AUTHOR.

No need to rely on the old Flash files any longer. There are 11 challenges in this set, from finding the name of an author to evaluating the author's credibility.

Get started here:  https://21cif.com/tutorials/evaluation/author/author-1

Publisher Detective

Just released: Publisher Detective

Try it for free for a limited time. Nine exercises to help searchers track down and evaluate publishers of online information. Helps in the hunt for credible news.

This replaces the flash version archived on our site.

https://21cif.com/tutorials/evaluation/publisher/publisher-1

Evaluating the Publisher Preview

Here's a free preview of the Evaluate the Publisher tutorial that is part of the WSI (Website Investigator) package.

If you can't determine who the author is, consider the publisher. They own the site and this can tell you something about the contents: whether they are endorsed or not by a reputable publisher.

An annual subscription gives you and your students access to all Information Fluency resources for one calendar year. More info.

https://21cif.com/wsi/training/publisher.html

Evaluation Method: Authorship

Other than the personal sniff test, which can be tainted by subjectivity, savvy searchers have other means at their disposal to determine if news may be fake or not.

One of these methods involves investigating the AUTHOR of the work in question. Schools that subscribe to Information Fluency have access to WSI - Website investigator, five cases for students to test their evaluation skills. To assist students, a series of tutorials are provided. Today's free preview is the WSI Authorship Tutorial: Finding and Evaluating an Author.

For more information on an annual subscription, see the Benefits of Membership.

If your school is already using WSI, we'd love to hear how you integrate it with other instruction and what students are discovering.

Personal Filters

On the 21st Century Information Fluency page last month, I posted this question:

What do you do to determine if news is fake? Share a tip.

The responses were all sound:

• (be wary of a site that) Doesn't provide reliable sources for the information or credentials of the author; if its intent is to elicit strong emotion.
• Consider/evaluate source and compare.
• Find multiple sources and compare.
• Use common sense and previous knowledge and experience. If it seems very strange check, double check snd triple check before accepting!
• Consult fact checking sites like Snopes or Fact-check.org
• Check to see who owns the site.

The tips fall into two types: evaluation methods and monitoring one's reaction to the news. Because it's internalized, the personal sniff test is the fast alternative and may suffer from subjectivity.

One of the problems in getting people of any age to fact check and source check is that it is time consuming. It requires secondary or investigative searching to research other sources of information in order to establish consistency and trust. Unless the stakes are high (risk is involved), I tend not to do it.

That leaves personal filters, which may seem pretty reliable depending on one's experience. Of course the younger you are, the less personal knowledge you have to rely on. Trusting what others say starts early, unless you were raised by wolves or the fear of them.

So let's say we assemble five individuals at random and expose them to some information. Are their reactions, informed by their personal filters, all going to be the same?  You can imagine the possibilities: one sees a conspiracy theory, one can take it or leave it, another becomes agitated, another is mollified and the last person has no memory of what they just read. Who's right? Everyone is, in their own eyes.

Personal filters can go dangerously awry, which is why it could be in the best interest of all to have a conversation or at least listen in to such conversations. One-sided truth seems to be a thing nowadays. 

Faked news is someone's one-sided truth. We might all benefit by sharing and listening before putting too much faith in our personal filters. When that's not possible, there is always fact and source checking.

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.

Hard Conversations

Have you noticed if your students rely on alt-right internet sites as credible sources for their research papers?

In a survey of 200 teachers, Jennifer Rich (Rowan University) found  that 60% of middle and high school students turn to alt-right websites as sources for information.

"The students are using alt-right sites to write papers on topics that range from free speech and the Second Amendment to citizenship, immigration and the Holocaust." source: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/tag/information-literacy/

The alt-right sites most commonly reported by teachers include National Policy Institute, Radix Journal, American Renaissance, Taki’s Magazine and Voat.

Teachers added that "students find the information on these sites appealing but are unable to differentiate between fact and fiction."

Findings like this are not surprising given information consumers' inability to discern fake news--but it is an educational concern. It is one thing personally to own a liberal, conservative or other position, it's another to believe anything one reads as an objective fact. 

The article is worth reading because it raises the question, "what should teachers do about it?" Should they avoid uncomfortable discussions or meet them head on?

"It is reasonable to expect heated student disagreement.... This, then, opens up space to teach students how to engage in respectful and difficult conversations with one another."

Providing readings on two or more sides of an issue, then discussing them, is highly recommended. For more, read the article.

Summer Full Circle Resource Kit

Bias Detection is the newest Kit in the Full Circle series.

One of the most popular MicroModules on the Information Fluency site is Bias. Becoming sensitive to bias and knowing that not everything in print or images is neutral or objective is one way to prevent unguarded consumption of fake or distorted news. Bias can be hard to detect, especially when a reader finds it agreeable.

The Feature article examines a front page case where bias was overlooked, resulting in shooting up a pizzeria thought to be a front for pedophile sex abuse in Washington DC.

Curricular Connections provides a helpful checklist for identifying and discussing incidents of bias in non-fiction and images.

Six interactive examples of biased and unbiased articles and one image are packaged in the Assessment section to help students evaluate bias. A score of 80% accuracy indicates fluency in detecting bias.

The Kit requires a subscription, but for a limited time, the feature article is free.

https://21cif.com//fullcircle/summer2018/index.php

Spring 18 Full Circle Kit now available

The newest edition of the 21st Century Information Fluency Full Circle Kit focuses on Fact Checking.

This is part three of three in a series on Investigative Searching. Access to the Kit requires an annual membership.

All Kits

Spring '18 Contents

Feature Article: Fake News, Part Three

Researchers at MIT recently published their findings about the spread of false news on Twitter. There is still no substitute for investigative searching. 

Action Zone: Fact Checking Challenge

This Level 3 challenge may be used with the Assessment guide to check students' understanding of fact checking.

Curriculum: Mini Lessons

Using two Websites about fake news to create mini lessons on fake news and fact checking.

Assessment: Fact Checking and Secondary Searching

Five items to measure how well students know when to Fact Checking and how.

Facts Matter

I recently updated a 21cif MicroModule on Evidence that got me thinking about recent elections in the US. What role did facts actually play?

Election outcomes don't boil down to just a few factors. Not everyone who voted one way or the other did so without weighing pros and cons. In all probability there could have been cases where a vote was cast knowing something about that candidate wasn't 100% satisfactory. For some, evidence to back up claims was critical; for others, not so much.

Throw into this mix Fake News. Titles that appeared include these:

“Twitter, Google and Facebook are burying the FBI criminal investigation of Clinton.”
“Donald Trump Protester Speaks Out: ‘I Was Paid $3,500 To Protest Trump’s Rally.'”
"FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE."
“Remember the voting days: Republicans vote on Tuesday, 11/8 and Democrats vote on Wednesday, 11/9”
“Just out according to @CNN: “Utah officials report voting machine problems across entire country.”

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/11/did-fake-news-on-facebook-send-trump-to-the-white-house/

Whereas none of the headlines can be supported with evidence, did they reinforce or sway voters? Perhaps.

Without evidence, believing something is true gives all the control to the news source.

"If you don't look for evidence you blindly place all your trust in the alleged accuracy of a source. How do you know they are right?"

(Source: http://21cif.com//tutorials/micro/mm/evidence/index.php)

Here's a helpful open source document on evaluating Fake News sites, thanks to Melissa Zimdars: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview

She lists 11 tips:

• Three involve checking the URL of the news source. 
• Three are about lack of author or publisher attribution. 
• Two are about checking other, known sources. 
• One is about the effects of biased writing creating an emotional response. 
• One is about formatting (pay attention to ALL CAPS)
• One is about content that encourages bad Internet etiquette.

Can you think of others? These are worth putting into practice unless you don't think facts matter any more.

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.

Crap Detection 101

Amateur Whale Research Kit?

Howard Rheingold is credited with Crap Detection 101: How to tell accurate information from inaccurate information, misinformation, and disinformation.

Put your crap detector to work here: http://www.icrwhale.net/products/amateur-whale-research-kit

Some of the usual investigative techniques (backlinks, fact checking) don't work very well. What is it that "tells" you this information, at face value, cannot be trusted?

Re-release of Author Tutorial

Another refreshed tutorial is now available on 21cif:  Author


Author is the first in our series of Evaluation tutorials. Earlier last month we re-released Publisher. In the coming weeks expect to see two more: Date Checking and Back Link Checking.

If you want to try the Author module in a non-flash format, we just completed a revision.

There are three sections to the tutorial:

Practice the skills: to help novices, there are some practice exercises that introduce methods to solve the challenges in the tutorial. These focus on fact checking queries, truncation and browsing.
Find the Author: four challenges of increasing difficulty to identify the author of a page or site.
Investigate the Author: using clues on the site and external sites to determine if the author has a good, poor or unknown reputation. There are three of these challenges.

Try it out!  Tutorials may be completed in as little as a few minutes by individuals or extended into a classroom activity if desired. The final page may be printed and turned in if you want to see how students fared.

Start the tutorial