What can't Google do for you?

We already know Google is wildly popular, the go-to search engine for most students and a disruptive innovator in search technology.

But it can't do everything.

There are many times a non-trivial question arises and Google is not the right tool. It's fine for most easy searches, but when the information needed is more complex or you can't think of the right keywords to use, Google hits a wall.

At times like these, having information fluency skills is essential. Searching may require a different, specialized search engine. Knowing how to learn to use an unfamiliar search engine is highly important. So are investigative skills to check out questionable news. Google is not your one stop shop for all that.

Finding specialized research articles is one example. The first of the three free Internet Search Challenges is one of those.

If you have your own example of a time when Google was not the answer, feel free to share it here.

Information Researcher is up and running

 

A refresh of Information Researcher is now available. This assessment and tutorial package identifies weaknesses and strengthens skills in information fluency.

The subscription package consists of a six item Pretest, followed by a 9 unit set of interactive tutorials on all information fluency skills. A ten item Certification Exam concludes the learning experience. This was originally developed for the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and has been revised based on user feedback.

A free preview of the Tutorials is available here.

To test your information fluency skills, try the Three Free Search Challenges, adapted from the Pretest.

Coronavirus Fake News

China Coronavirus

When life gets scary, it's important to think twice about information.


The outbreak of the coronavirus is a good example. As the numbers of people affected and dying grows daily, the amount of misinformation surrounding the outbreak expands globally. Some of the information is considered misleading and unhealthy.

News reports have begun to circulate stories about fake news and the coronavirus. This presents a ripe opportunity to use information fluency to identify fake news claims.

Many people are attracted to a possible solution known as Master Mineral Solution (aka Miracle Mineral Solution or MMS). Here's a sample copied from the testimonial page:

I was teaching a class and all of the sudden, I got a head cold ... This rushed on me like a freight train! I was miserable until evening, then I thought I would take a mega-dose of CDS that I had in the fridge. I just poared some in a glass, added some water to it, and down the hatch! I guess now, it was equal to a 6 drop dose of MMS. Within, say, 2 or 3 minutes, the "cold" left like the wind blowing a raincloud away. Clear as a bell!

Before you go online to place an order--this is also touted as a cure for coronavirus--do some fact checking. 

Try an investigative query like Miracle Mineral Solution coronavirus. Then examine the results:

• Are they positive or negative?
• Who is the publisher?

A summary of the results for the first ten results from this search in Google shows that none of the sources have positive things to say about MMS, using words like "bleach," "QANON," "conspiracy theory," "dangerous," "toxic," "acute liver failure," "vomiting" and more. The sources include rollingstone.com, thedailybeast.com, salon.com, vice.com, businessinsider.com, nypost.com, nymag.com, armstrongmywire.com and inews.co.uk.  These aren't necessarily considered authorities on health issues. But the preponderance of negativity regarding MMS raises a red flag.

Now, if we had confirmation of such claims from a recognized authority, that might convince us not to try MMS. So another query is tried, taking one of the keywords commonly found in the first results: medical authority coronavirus bleach.

The first result includes this information in the snippet (abstract): "But medical authorities, including the US Food and Drugs Administration, have ..."  This invites further reading. Browsing the article, clicking links on the FDA-related information, leads to this page on the fda site: 

FDA warns consumers about the dangerous and potentially life threatening side effects of Miracle Mineral Solution

Here is another Red Flag. If you have students, see what other medical authorities they can find.

Where does information fluency intersect with entrepreneurship?

The latest edition of the Full Circle Kit for winter 2020 looks at information through the eyes of an entrepreneur. Startups live and die in markets. Gathering intel about one's market includes knowing about the size of one's market, market demographics, competitors and their market share. Much of this information is available online, if you know where to look.

This seven step tutorial includes interactive challenges and explanations, starting with optimizing keyword queries, finding and navigating specialized databases, browsing and using search strategies to find accurate market sizes, competitors and their share of the market. Online searching is only one of the ways to research a market, but it's one of the first tools used by lean startups that can't afford expensive market reports.

For a limited time, this tutorial is available without a subscription. Take a free tour!

Market Research Information Fluency

US High Schoolers fail to evaluate digital information

Research findings published yesterday by Stanford reveal low levels of Information Fluency among US High School students.

FULL REPORT HERE

In a nutshell, here are the high level results, described as "troubling:"

• Fifty-two percent of students believed a grainy video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries (the video was actually shot in Russia) constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the U.S. Among more than 3,000 responses, only three students tracked down the source of the video, even though a quick search turns up a variety of articles exposing the ruse. 
•  Two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference between news stories and ads (set off by the words “Sponsored Content”) on Slate’s homepage. 
• Ninety-six percent of students did not consider why ties between a climate change website and the fossil fuel industry might lessen that website’s credibility. Instead of investigating who was behind the site, students focused on superficial markers of credibility: the site’s aesthetics, its top-level domain, or how it portrayed itself on the About page. 

Whose problem is this?

Something you can do about it

If you are tasked with teaching students to find and evaluate online information, resources on Information Fluency can help. Our research with Northwestern's Center for Talent Development showed marked improvement in the ability to detect and investigate information. Most students are OK when doing speculative searching (what they are looking for and how to get there) but investigative searching is another matter.

Be intentional about giving students investigative challenges as part of assignments.

If someone else (or no one) at your school has this task, show them Stanford's Report. Form a team to teach evaluation across the curriculum.

Another Unimpressive Performance by US 8th Graders

Image Source

The latest results from the 2018 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) Web Report were published recently. Among the takeaways:

Two competency domains were tested:

• CIL - Computer and Information Literacy 
• CT - Computational Thinking

The results of CIL have a direct bearing on Information Fluency, the ability to find digital information efficiently, evaluate it effectively and use it ethically. Here's an excerpt from the results overview:

In the United States, female 8th-grade students outperformed their male peers in CIL, but male 8th-grade students outperformed female students in CT. Also, U.S. 8th-grade students with 2 or more computers at home performed better in both CIL and CT than their U.S. peers with fewer computers. Among U.S. 8th-grade students, 72 percent reported using the Internet to do research every school day or at least once a week, and 65 percent reported teaching themselves how to find information on the Internet.  source

It's the last finding that is noteworthy from an Information Fluency perspective. Two out of three students teach themselves how to search. That being said, it's remarkable the US average is above the world average, the US ranking #5, following Denmark, Moscow, Republic of Korea and Finland.

From our studies, the process of learning how to search for the majority of US students involves trial and error: entering keywords in a search engine (usually Google) and seeing if the results match expectations. While some search engines are getting better at interpreting whole language sentences or phrases used as queries, that remains a common practice. In fact, the better the machines become, the less apparent it becomes that full sentences isn't an effective way to find relevant information. It must be kept in mind that many sophisticated search engines still do business the old way: literal keywords. What works in Google doesn't work in all search engines, especially specialized ones. Therefore, constant exposure to Google and other semantic search engines, reduces trial and error learning. The results are just there.

And because relevant results seem to show up, they must be good, right? If 65% of US students teach themselves to search, one can only wonder what the percentage of students who teach themselves to evaluate information might be.

Searching in the Now

Inspired by California Wildfires, the Fall 2019 edition of the Full Circle Kit is now available.

One of the problems with searching the Internet is retrieving information that is too old to be useful. This is the case with ongoing natural disasters like the Kincade fire in Sonoma County. How do you stay current on changing conditions when, driven by gale-force winds, a lot can happen in just a few minutes?

The feature article reviews problems with old information online and how to find reliable real-time sources. There are many times having the freshest information possible doesn't matter. But when it's a matter of life and death, accessing the latest news can be crucial.

Other resources in this Kit include a Curriculum Connections group activity for students to compare the currency of information sources, an Internet Search Challenge on the Stock Market real time quotes and a Quiz for assessing students' grasp of necessary competencies.

Full Circle Fall 2019

The feature article is available without a subscription. The full Kit requires an annual membership. An individual membership is $20; a school license is $249.