When I thought about the subject at hand, I couldn't help but connect it to the popular commercial from State Farm. While the commercial is actually about apps for insurance, it also highlights the dangerous trend of people believing everything they read on the internet. Humorously, a guy claims to be a "French model" and the women believes him because she read it on the internet, even though he doesn't look like a model and can hardly speak French. Believing that I was much more sophisticated than that, I looked at the websites that we were asked to evaluate. I have to admit, I could have easily been fooled and this scared me when I thought about what sources my students were using for their research.
I've actually seen the first website, as it popped up during a google search while I was researching something for my classroom. I didn't really look at it for long, since the language was unacceptable for classroom use, I quickly moved on to a more acceptable website. Thinking about it in this context, however, it seems more more sinister. When you look at who created the page, it's somewhat difficult to discern that it is a white supremacy group, a pretty biased source. I'm pretty sure the average middle schooler wouldn't take the time to figure out the source of the information.
The DHMO website was even trickier, at least for a non-science person like me. There was an air of authenticity about the website because it was connected to several legitimate websites and I couldn't figure out who created it. I mean who is Tom Way? A famous scientist? Someone who works for the government? The website wasn't very specific about who this man was. I also looked at when it was created, and it showed that the site had been updated today. The only thing that gave away the authenticity of the website was that at the very bottom in tiny blue print were the words "content veracity not implied", meaning the content wasn't reliable. Also, when I clicked on the US Environmental Assessment Center, it took me to a site about the dangers of DHMO. I had to do a second google search, however, to find out that DHMO is another name for water. I'm not sure that everyone who looks at the site would take the time to cross reference and most middle schoolers wouldn't know the definition of veracity. I'll admit I wouldn't have known the definition if it wasn't defined in the description of the assignment.
Finally, the rennets website was confusing because it offered a made-up definition of rennet, with really cute pictures to verify the definition. Also, when I double checked with a google search, rennets are a key part of the cheese-making process. However, there were somethings that were suspicious. Who are Mark and Jamie? There is no further information about who they are, and what kind of credentials they have. So I clicked on the "about us" tab and found out that they made most of the information up and they admit it. However, if you didn't take the time to click on the tab, you could confused about the source of rennets in cheese-making.
I've been suggesting to students to look for websites that end in edu or gov, because they are more closely monitored than other sites. While this is a good starting point, I think that it should be mentioned that even these sites should be evaluated further, especially for bias. I'm wondering how much training we give students regarding evaluating websites, because I found though this assignment, it is easy to be fooled.
No comments:
Post a Comment