Having fun while helping kids decide: Can you trust what's on the Web?

Use this 4/1/07 BBC video as an icebreaker when teaching information literacy and digital citizenship. It will prompt a great conversations about the importance of critical thinking when examining information on the Web.

I'd like more Web sources that can build awareness of different issues around reputable sources. Aside from the MLK one Alan November often uses (actually a skinhead hate site under a glossy home page), can you think of others? Please weigh in.

Tags: citizenship, literacy

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The Museum of Hoaxes is a fun resource to explore.
I love it, thank you!
It probably wouldn't be hard to take two Wikipedia pages and compare the amount/quality of information that they have, and use that as the basis for discussion as well.
Teaching Kids To Authenticate Web Sites [Alan November]
http://novemberlearning.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&catid...

Who Do You Trust
Anyone can make a website. How do you know whether or not to trust what you read online? This is a great web quest created by CTAP Region 3 with a grant from the ALA.
http://www.altn.org/webquests/websites/

ReadWriteThink: Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=405

Digital Natives and Visual Literacy - Got Missiles?
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/digitalnatives/2008/07/10/got-missiles
Thank you so much for sharing these great links, Anne. I am developing a unit on website reliability for 7th graders, and I will certainly utilize these resources. Cheers!
More resources:

Photo Tampering Throughout History
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

Teaching Media Literacy:
Helping Kids Become Wise Consumers of Information

http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/activities/multimedia/medialit.asp
The ability for students to be able to dissememiate information from fact to fiction can be often enlightening or frightening. There has to be more discussion on the ethical, poitical, cultural and moral intentions of the site as well as the research methodology used to facilitate information. Teaching US History, I found some students who will take at site as the truth on some pretty significant issues and instilling an awareness that "perception becomes a reality" is essenial in seeking the truth in all matters.
Ya know... this would be a lot of fun to create with the students after they've been shammed. Have them work in teams to create a believable hoax... not that we need more, but it could be used for later years or traded with other schools... see how could make the most believable hoax. I'm not sure how hard this would be and I'm sure one would have to front for the domain name as well. :)
Ever notice how the "network" news treats online communities? Given their track records (Fox news most glaring example) I am still shocked by the stock so many people put in them. Ratings do not intersect with responsibility anymore than the number of hits correlate with reliable web sites. Transcending provincial "tribalism" is what the web is capable of ...naturally there are growing pains. I remain optimistic for all things digital and will continue to ignore textbooks for the rest of my teaching career.

question all things naturally...the truth will sift through
Hi Woody,

If you are on Twitter, than this is nothing new - but if not, boy is there an application out there for you at www.twitter.com

You can begin tracking me at www.twitter.com/mikeromard and I follow a lot of the top educators out there.

Here is a news article that is hours old - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EQ5K-dVT_xE/- pointing to how twitter had the news on the Mumbai blasts way before the 'network' news channels did. Basically, I was on the same raw news line that a lot of the journalists were on.

Personally, I'm still only share my twitter lessons with teachers, but I've heard some folks are introducing students to it. Maybe it depends on the age of the students.

Enjoy,
Mike

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